Roger Chartier

Collège de France · Institut d'Etudes Littéraires

In this article the author reflects on the supposed ‘crisis of history’ which obsessed historians in the 1980s and 1990s. From these reflections the article seeks to provide answers to questions of ‘what history is’ between the definitions as narrative and knowledge. By analyzing the ideas of many intellectual historians such as Michel de Certeau a...

This essay sets out to analyse the seven successive or contemporary forms in which Shakespeare’s poems and plays were published from the 1590s until the end of the eighteenth century. It highlights a dual tendency: On the one hand, Shakespeare’s texts were bound together with those of other authors or exclusively with his own (as in the Folio of 16...

This essay in memory of Daniel Fabre is devoted to the communication he gave in the conference "Death Today" held in Saint-Maximin in July 1981. In his contribution Daniel Fabre analyzed the importance and the the role played by the "messengers of the dead" in the relation between the livings and their dead, either within the framework of the theol...

Since the 1990s, the mystery of Cardenio, one of the lost Shakespearean plays, has attracted novelists who have transformed it into detective stories, theatre directors who have staged a play that no longer exists and editors, with the inclusion of Cardenio in the canonical catalogue of the Arden Series. The fever is still there, with new productio...

This review article poses three questions, essentially based on the first two volumes of Histoire des sciences et des savoirs , a collective undertaking edited by Dominique Pestre. First, it considers the relationships between “science” and “knowledge.” Can a clear line be drawn between them? Or should “scientific” knowledge (with or without quotat...

This critical note poses three questions, essentially based on the first two volumes of Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, a collective undertaking edited by Dominique Pestre. First, it considers the relationships between “science” and “knowledge.” Can a clear line be drawn between them? Or should “scientific” knowledge (with or without quotatio...

Le fils du maitre. Dans un essai autobiographique publie en 1987, une annee apres son election au College de France sur une chaire intitulee « Histoire de la France contemporaine », Maurice Agulhon resumait ainsi son enfance passee, non pas tellement dans un village, mais dans une ecole, l’ecole de Pujaut, dans le Gard, ou ses parents etaient l’un...

Conferencia presentada en el seminario Educarlos sentimientos y las costumbres, Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo, Valencia-España, 29 de octubre de 2012.

How can we read a text that doesn’t exist, show a play whose manuscript has been lost and whose author isn’t known for sure? This is Cardenio’s riddle — a play performed in England for the first time in 1612 or 1613 and attributed forty years later to Shakespeare (and Fletcher). The plot is based on a “short story” inserted in Don Quichotte, a book...

This chapter is devoted to the Spanish and French plays that adapted the story of Cardenio for the stage and coped with the same difficulties faced by Fletcher and Shakespeare (if they are the authors of the play performed at the English Court in 1613): i.e., how to transform the narrative structure of the fortunes and misfortunes of the four Cerva...

Le dialogue présenté ici, entre Roger Chartier et Robert Darnton, eut lieu au Collège de France à l’occasion de la leçon inaugurale d’une nouvelle chaire nommée Écrits et culture dans l’Europe moderne, ayant Roger Chartier comme professeur titulaire. Le 11 octobre 2007, lors de l’ouverture de cette chaire, Chartier prononçait l’exposé “Écouter les...

This study of the play Vida do grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do gordo Sancho Pança by Antônio José da Silva connects three histories: the history of theatrical adaptations of the second part of Dom Quixote; the history of a frequently neglected theatrical practice, that of the marionette theater, situated between popular entertainement and the...

By tracing connotations of the word « representation » in history, Roger Chartier elaborates on the word’s various meanings. On the one hand, representation refers to someone or something acting in place of an absent person or object. On the other hand, representation can also refer to public presence. Furthermore, Chartier describes how collective...

The article examines Borges's 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' from the biographical, autobiographical, allegorical, critical, aesthetic and bibliographical perspective. In all these contexts, the story reveals itself as either explicitly or implicitly self-referential, reading in each instance itself in its relation to the author, the public...

This article underlines, first, the persistence in the early modern European societies of forms of transmission of knowledge that do not presuppose reading, but oral speeches and images. It stresses, also the increasing importance of reading as an instrument for acquiring knowledge and its centrality in nineteenth century schools, when primary text...

Authors do not write books, not even their own books, because books are not the reproduction of an autograph manuscript. The publication of any text, literary or not, implies in Early Modern times multiple mediations and multiple mediators: copysts, editors, compositors, correctors. Following the example of punctuation in English, Spanish, and Fren...

To whom does a painted tablet-a tabula picta-belong? To the owner of the physical piece of wood on which an image is painted? Or to the person who made the painting on that piece of wood? By extension, one might ask, who is the owner of a text? Is it the person who has written the words, or the individual who possesses the piece of parchment or sla...

Au debut de la lecon inaugurale de votre chaire du College de France « Ecrit et cultures dans l’Europe moderne », vous precisez que votre enseignement se situera « entre la fin du Moyen Âge et notre present ». Quelle importance attachez-vous a l’inclusion des derniers siecles du Moyen Âge dans la definition de votre travail ? L’importance des derni...

This chapter contains section titled:

The prelims comprise: Acquiring Shakespeare Shakespeare Unbound and Bound Commonplacing Shakespeare Note Acquiring Shakespeare Shakespeare Unbound and Bound Commonplacing Shakespeare Note

Quisiera dedicar esta reflexión a las diversas formas de relación con el pasado que lo hacen contemporáneo del presente. Quisiera abordar tres temas que permiten discutir diversas propuestas teóricas y presentar ejemplos sacados de mis más recientes investigaciones. Estos temas son en primer lugar la construcción del pasado por las obras literarias...

Opus mechanicum and authorial text What is a book? This is the question that Kant raises in his 1797 The Metaphysics of Morals. He answers by distinguishing between the two natures of a book. On the one hand, a book is an “opus mechanicum,” a material (“körperlich”) object that has been produced by a mechanical art and that can be reproduced by any...

This text wishes to show, through the case of Quixote, that the study of the conditions around text publishing and its sense understanding cannot be separated. The intercrossing between the history of the book (and printing) and the sociology of texts as defined by D. F. McKenzie, seeks the possibility of overcoming the long-lasting and mutilating...

Book History 8 (2005) 37-50 Why this title and theme? The first reason is that today, here in the city of Lyon, when we honor the pioneer in the study of the history of books, our friend and mentor Henri-Jean Martin, I wish, by using the expression "sociology of texts," to associate with him a scholar who has also breached frontiers: Don McKenzie....

Shakespeare Quarterly 55.4 (2004) 379-419 Books play a prominent role in Hamlet. In 2.2, the prince enters "reading on a Booke," according to a stage direction in the First Folio (TLN 1203 [2.2.167 s.d.]); and in 3.1, Polonius instructs Ophelia to "Reade on this booke" (TLN 1695 [3.1.43]). In the former scene, Gertrude comments on Hamlet's entrance...

In 1762, Goldoni bid farewell to Venice. His last comedy before his departure to Paris was entitled Una delle ultime sere di Carnevale (One of the last evenings of the Carnival) and was staged in the Teatro San Luca. The whole play rests upon an allegory between weaving and theatrical performance. To each weaving craft (designer, silk merchant, mas...

Lodovica Braida, Stampa e cultura tra XV e XVI secolo, Rome-Bari, Laterza, «Biblioteca Esenziale Laterza», 2000, 162 p. - Volume 56 Issue 4-5 - Roger Chartier

Les deux essais de Serge Gruzinski et Sanjay Subrahmanyam, rapprochés dans ce numéro des Annales comme ils l’ont été dans leur forme orale lors de la Journée d’études «Penser le monde, xv e -xviii e siècle» organisée en mai 2000 itions. La première est donnée par les débats menés lors du xix e Congrès International des Sciences Historiques tenu en...

Les deux essais de Serge Gruzinski et Sanjay Subrahmanyam, rapprochés dans ce numéro des Annales comme ils l’ont été dans leur forme orale lors de la Journée d’études «Penser le monde, xv e -xviii e siècle» organisée en mai 2000 itions. La première est donnée par les débats menés lors du xix e Congrès International des Sciences Historiques tenu en...

Would texts, from now on, be fated to a mere electronic existence? Would books, in their format known since the sixteenth century, be condemned to disappear progressively and definitely? Before answering these questions we must follow the long history of books: from volumen to codex, from oriental xylography to Gutenberg's invention, from the Alexa...

En 1639, Poussin écrit à son ami et client Chantelou pour lui annoncer l'envoi du tableau intitulé La manne . En commentant cette lettre en un temps où l'emploi du terme de « lecture » allait de soi pour désigner le déchiffrement, la compréhension et l'interprétation d'objets ou de formes qui n'appartiennent pas à la lecture de l'écrit (” lire » un...

L'éditorial du printemps 1988 des Annales appelle les historiens à une réflexion commune à partir d'un double constat. D'une part, il affirme l'existence d'une « crise générale des sciences sociales », repérable dans l'abandon des systèmes globaux d'interprétation, de ces « paradigmes dominants » qu'avaient été, un temps, le structuralisme ou le ma...