Roger Chartier

"The fear of oblivion obsessed medieval and early modern Europe. Stone, wood, cloth, parchment, and paper all provided media onto which writing was inscribed as a way to ward off loss. And the task was not easy in a world in which writing could be destroyed, manuscripts lost, or books menaced with destruction. Paradoxically, the successful spread of printing posed another danger, that an uncontrollable proliferation of textual materials, of matter without order or limit, might allow useless texts to multiply and smother thought. Not everything written was destined for the archives; indeed, much was written on surfaces that allowed one to write, erase, then write again." "In Inscription and Erasure, Roger Chartier seeks to demonstrate how the tension between these two concerns played out in the imaginative works of their times. Chartier examines how authors transformed the material realities of writing and publication into an aesthetic resource exploited for poetic, dramatic, or narrative ends."--Jacket.

"Long before its emergence as a political entity, Europe was distinguished by its intense traffic in goods and people. Artist, art-lovers, and rich patrons made arduous journeys not only by road but also by river to far-flung locales as they sought to satisfy their appetite for beauty. This is the world of The Great Workshop, in which the editors develop a number of themes analyzing the circulation of art and the artistic community over a substantial geographic area ranging from Dublin to Palermo, from Cordoba to Stockholm, Rouen to Sofia. Short, focused essays treating the peregrinations of those conducting the business of art are crucial to our understanding of the migration of themes and formal motifs." "With its remarkable and often spectacular selections, The Great Workshop illustrates the complex web of European artistic exchange and production. The book contains 350 full-color examples from well over one hundred European collections and essays from distinguished art historians who elucidate a long stretch of art history from the fall of the Roman Empire to the birth of the first great museums of Europe."--Jacket.

English translation of L'ordre des livres (originally published 1992 in France by Editions Alinea) Between the end of the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century, what methods were used to monitor and control the increasing number of texts--from the early handwrtten books to the later, printed volumes--that were being put into circulation? In The Order of Books, Roger Chartier examines the different systems required to regulate the world of writing through the centuries, from the registration of titles to the classification of works. The modern world has, he argues, directly inherited the products of this labor: the basic principle of referring to texts, the dream of a universal library, real or imaginary, containing all the works ever written, and the emergence of a new definition of the book leading to some of the innovations that transformed the relationship of the reader to the text.

Editing and literature in Spain (XVI and XVII) is a collection of seventeen articles by leading specialists in Spanish literature of the Golden Age and history of literacy. As part of a multidisciplinary reflection conditions are studied jointly publication and dissemination of literary works in the Golden Age and the significance of the texts. The interest in the materiality of the old book in its more technical various aspects sheds light on the conditions of production and reception of texts. This reflection on editorial practice in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in particular on the role of author and involvement of the different actors and actions on the text, are some of the main issues addressed. Also the role of the physical space of the old book in the study of textuality is questioned, in order to highlight the set of elements that influence reading and promote access to meaning. Besides the attempt to reconstitute the passage of text printing, the book is a reflection on the issue of golden works today, taking into account the new dissemination tools.

Reference tool for Rare Books Collection.

"In 1988, the renowned sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the leading historian Roger Chartier met for a series of lively discussions that were broadcast on French public radio. Published here for the first time, these conversations are an accessible and engaging introduction to the work of these two great thinkers, who discuss their work and explore the similarities and differences between their disciplines with the clarity and frankness of the spoken word.Bourdieu and Chartier discuss some of the core themes of Bourdieu's work, such as his theory of fields, his notions of habitus and symbolic power and his account of the relation between structures and individuals, and they examine the relevance of these ideas to the study of historical events and processes. They also discuss at length Bourdieu's work on culture and aesthetics, including his work on Flaubert and Manet and his analyses of the formation of the literary and artistic fields. Reflecting on the differences between sociology and history, Bourdieu and Chartier observe that while history deals with the past, sociology is dealing with living subjects who are often confronted with discourses that speak about them, and therefore it disrupts, disconcerts and encounters resistance in ways that few other disciplines do.This unique dialogue between two great figures is a testimony to the richness of Bourdieu's thought and its enduring relevance for the humanities and social sciences today"--

In Early Modern Europe the first readers of a book were not those who bought it. They were the scribes who copied the author's or translator's manuscript, the censors who licensed it, the publisher who decided to put this title in his catalogue, the copy editor who prepared the text for the press, divided it and added punctuation, the typesetters who composed the pages of the book, and the proof reader who corrected them. The author's hand cannot be separated from the printers' mind. This book is devoted to the process of publication of the works that framed their readers' representations of the past or of the world. Linking cultural history, textual criticism and bibliographical studies, dealing with canonical works--like Cervantes' Don Quixote or Shakespeare's plays--as well as lesser known texts, Roger Chartier identifies the fundamental discontinuities that transformed the circulation of the written word between the invention of printing and the definition, three centuries later, of what we call 'literature'.--Back cover.