Abstract

The article presents the Finnish nationalist or fennomanian conception of love of reading in a European cultural historical context. The fennomania movement in Finland was one of the many nationalist movements in Europe in the 19th century that emphasized the emancipation of the vernacular language and literature. Hegelian philosopher, journalist and statesman Johan Wilhelm Snellman initially constructed the fennomanian ideology. Snellman and his followers embedded literacy, reading and love of reading into the absolute inner core of their education philosophy and policy. Especially the emphasis on love of reading, i.e., that the motivation for reading must come from the spontaneous interest of the individual and not from outer coercion, connects their rhetoric to the European discourse on reading that since the 18th century sought the motivation for reading in the love of reading that inspires people to read.

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