ABSTRACT
Given the essentially circular relationship between readers and texts, however, it is important that we also give closer thought to that other transformational aspect of reading, profoundly significant for the individual reader, which Stephen Greenblatt describes as ‘self-fashioning.’ Expectation of such beneficial outcomes to reading was also implicit in certain people’s behaviour—for example, when donating books, the whole point of this action being, in effect, to improve the recipient by creating the opportunity for an appropriate response to be experienced. Personal experiences and professional obligations evidently intermingled, providing a context in which the author’s words were weighed and imbued with specific meanings and implications. Discerning the meaning of one of the Scottish Enlightenment’s most eminent publications therefore did not necessarily entail accepting its implications. Nor did it have to mean making one’s agreement with the text an integral part of one’s own image and identity.
