HU 520

Notes on The Order of Books by Roger Chartier

Notes on the Preface, Chapters #1 and #3, and the Epilogue

These notes were written by Patricia Ericsson at Michigan Technological University for HU 520: The Rhetorics of a Print/Digital Culture, taught by Dickie Selfe and Bill Powers.

Preface

The initial question of this collections of essays: "how did people in Western Europe between the end of the Middle Ages and the eighteenth century attempt to master the enormously increased number of texts that first the manuscript book and then print but into circulation?" (vii)

Chartier claims that we are the heirs of this "immense effort motivated by anxiety."

These elements

1. the author as the fundamental principle for the designation of a text
2. the dream of the universal library
3. the new definition of the book

are set in contradiction to the relationship the reader has with the book. The above are concerned with control of meaning, but the reader is a rebel who will not subscribe to the meaning set by the controlling forces of the author, the printer, and the distributor.

Culture

In addition to highlighting the above, Chartier challenges the reader to begin reflection on the "two meanings that we spontaneously give to the term 'culture'" (ix). The first designates the works and the acts that lend themselves to aesthetic or intellectual appreciation in any given society; the second aims at ordinary, banal practices that express the way in which community--on any scale--experiences and conceives of its relationship with the world, with others, and with itself.

Malleable nature of works

Chartier claims that there is not "stable, universal, fixed" meaning in works, especially the "greatest" works. These works have multiple and changing meanings that are socially constructed. The authors (or those in power) may try to pin down their meanings and inscribe a correct reading, but those efforts always fail.

Despite a work being produced in a certain milieu, it is interpreted in a different "culture" and becomes a part of that milieu and a way of interpreting it differently. Conversely, Chartier claims, the work is a part of its time and place and is in many ways dependent on that specific situation. This is a "complex, usable, shifting relationship"(xi).

Essays situated (Chartier's gap)

Chartier begins with these observations to situate what he will attempt in the three essays: "Reflection on how the figure of the author was constructed, on the rules for the formation of the communities of readers, or on the significance invested in the building of libraries" (xi).

His warning is to "rid" us of some of our "over-sure distinction and some over-familiar truisms" (xi).

Chapter #1 Communities of Readers

As indicated in the Notes for Chapter #1, this chapter is dedicated to Michel de Certeau, who is often quoted in the chapter. For readers (like me) who are unfamiliar with de Certeau, a WWW search on de Certeau finds him frequently cited, but little basic information about him available. One site that has important exerpts from his most-quoted work The Practice of Everyday Life can be found at http://humanitas.ucsb.edu/users/hwang/rm/decerteau.html

Chartier believes in the social construction of texts and their meaning. In order to gain some insight into these constructions he suggests a historical approach to the "communities of readers" and sets up some conditions for a historical look at the practices of reading texts.

Chartier sets up the "triangle"

To look at the historical perspective of reading requires that we first "accept the notion that their meanings are dependent upon the forms through which they are received and appropriated by their readers" (3). He goes on to say (contrary to a structuralist criticism) that "forms produce meaning and that a text, stable in its letter, is invested with a new meaning and status when the mechanisms that make it available to interpretation change" (3).

Secondly, the historian of reading must realize that "reading is always a practice embodied in acts, spaces, and habits" (3) and must identify "the specific mechanisms that distinguish the various communities of readers and traditions of reading" (4). The historian must interrogate "the expectations and interests that various groups of readers invest in the practice of reading" (4).

Chartier also cautions that the "history of reading must be radically distinguished from a history of what is read" (5) He notes dissatisfaction with recent French focus on the presence of books themselves within different social groups and the significance of gaps in culture as a result of the presence of absence of books within a certain social group. He objects strongly to a history of the book that is purely social and quantitative and attempts to come to conclusions on thr basis of the presence of texts of certain types. He calls this approach "doubly reductive" because "it equated the identification of differences with mere inequalities in distribution" and ignores the process "by which a text takes on meaning for those who read it" (7).

Different texts can be "differently apprehended, manipulated, and comprehended" (8) and this conception needs to be one of the realizations of a re-understanding of reading. He also demands that the conditions of reading that involve the body, "space and a relationship with oneself or with others," (8) be considered in the history of reading. In this demand, he challenges the historian of reading to consider the "oralization" of a text as part of it's history. (See question 2 below.)

His third consideration of the history of a text is that such a history must realize that "there is not comprehension of an written piece that does not at least in part depend upon the forms in which it reaches its reader" (9). "The space between the text and object, which is precisely the space in which meaning is constructed" (10) must not be forgotten.

The "triangle" (see question 1 below) approach sets up a point of departure: "the relationship set up among the text, the book, and the reader" (10). Changes in the text itself (like size of the printed copy, the numbering of scenes, or decorative elements,) have important implications for how the text will be read. One example used is the move to break up pieces of text. In the case of the Scripture, when the practice of dividing the words into chapter and verse became popular, writers like John Locke worried that the "powerful coherence of the Word" (12) would be obliterated. The claim went as far as asserting that "The effects of breaking up Scripture in this manner were disastrous: it authorized every religious sect or part to found its legitimacy on the scriptural passages that seemed to support its views" (12).

The "Bibliotheque blue" as an example

The re-publication of a text in a new form that makes that text available to a new public changes the history of its reading quite drastically. Chartier uses lengthy examples from the French "Bibliotheque blue" and notes that classical pieces chosen for such popular dissemination underwent considerable editorial changes before they were published for a wide clientele. They were shortened, simplified, and illustrations were provided thus adapted to the potential consumers abilities and expectations. The publication size of the texts was also changed. In other words, the text were adapted to the reading styles of the public for whom they were intended.

Changes in texts and their methods of presentation often result in "cultural bifurcation" so that certain texts seem more appropriate for certain cultural groups. These changes create "new appropriations" which in turn create "new publics and new uses" (15). Sometimes a shared use of the same texts calls for the production of new differences to mark social distances that some wish to maintain. As books and reading became more accessible across France, the mere presence of books no longer was a strong enough cultural marker. "Henceforth readers of distinction and handsome books stood opposed to hastily printed works and their awkward decipherers" (16).

Fixed text; changing situations

The relationship between text, print and reading also is dependent on the fact that the text is fixed, but the conditions of the readers and reading is not. One factor is the text being read aloud; the second is the difference between sacred texts and those treated more irreverently; the third is the condition of reading as a private solitary act.

Chartier comments that "The most interesting question posed to and by the history of reading today is certainly that of the ways in which these three sets of mutations--technological , formal, and cultural--related to one another" (18). Additionally, the mere presence of books is not a gauge of readership. Not every book that is owned is read and not every book that is read is singularly owned. Furthermore, reading can often have an extended audience when accomplished orally in a public situation. Literacy does not take into careful enough account of the familiarity with the written word even though a particular public might not be solitary readers.

The strength of print is acknowledged (its "pedagogical, acculturating, and disciplining role" (21)) by the authorities who seek to control printer matter. Interestingly, Cartier comments that "The creativity of the reader grows as the institution that controls it declines" (21).

Finally Chartier returns to Michel de Certeau and recalls propositions that he believes govern the history of the reader: "reading is never totally constraint," that the history of reading "cannot be deduced from the texts it makes use of," and "reader's tactics, . . . follow logical systems and imitate models" (23).

Questions for consideration:

1. What are the differences betwee the three elements that Chartier sets up as the triangle? (Particularly, how are elements one and three different?)
2. Is Chartier's demand that the conditions of reading that involve the body be considered new and/or important?
3. How does the example of the "Bibliotheque blue" illustrate the elements of the triangle that Chartier sets up?
4. Do all three elements of the triangle play equal rolls in the equation?

Essay #3 Libraries Without Walls

"The dream of a library (in a variety of configurations) that would bring together all accumulated knowledge and all the books ever written can be found throughout the history of Western civilization" (62).

Boullee's library

Dreams of the library have varied from the 1785 version proposed by Etienne-Louis Boullee which was a long court surrounded by books. The space he imagined is a sacred structure devoted to books, solitude, and perhaps, "erudite conversations" (63). Boullee's library differs from the classical model (Greek) where the books were few and the interactions between people and with nature were part of the space. The space he invented "converges towards a door that marks the threshold between the profane worlds of the ignorant and the world of learning's elect and towards an allegorical statue in the classical mode, a symbol of the heritage that must be brought together and mastered before new thoughts are conceivable" (63).

Print intervenes in the dream

The dream of an exhaustive collection became an impossible dream with the advent of print. Selection became necessary and ideally the library would be made up of "an 'infinity of good, singular, and remarkable' works" (64).

Definitions of "bibliotheque"

Chartier notes that the word "bibliotheque" had various meanings. The first was a room full of books; the second meaning was a listing of books or compliation of works. Various iterations of these two definitions of library came into existence. Some libraries were huge, others small collections of specific works. The same was true of the compilations: some were attempts to catalog all works ever, and others were specific listings. These catalogs were the "libraries without walls." Chartier goes into specifics of how both the walled libraries and the catalog libraries were organized. Some were genre specific, others were language oriented (thus, for example proving the excellence and prolificity of French authors over Italian (75-76)), and some were arranged alphabetically.

La Croix du Maine's classifications

Chartier focuses on La Croix du Maine's multiple systems of classification. The first classification order is the author. Then du Maine notes the person to whom the work was dedicated, and as a third classification places the work in "an order or class of knowledge" (84).

The inherent tension

The conception of a library has an inherent tension: "A universal library (or at least universal in one order of knowledge) could not be other than fictive, reduced to the dimensions of a catalogue, a nomenclature, or a survey. Conversely, any library that is actually installed in a specific place that is made up of real works available for consultation and reading, no matter how rich it might be, gives only a truncated image of all accumulable knowledge " (88).

Questions for consideration:

1. Does the system of cataloging make as much difference as Chartier's emphasis on it indicates? If so, what are those differences?

Epilogue

As an Epilogue, Chartier acknowledges the dream is to overcome the contradictions above. A reality that unites the contradiction appears to be possible on the computer screen. "The opposition long held to be insurmountable between the closed world of any finite collection, no matter what its size, and the infinite universe of all text ever written is thus theoretically annihilated: now the catalogue of all catalogues ideally listing the totality of written production can be realized in a universal access to text available for consultation at the reader's location" (90).

Although he uses the present tense, Chartier realizes the future reality of the online presence of all texts. Anticipating that availability, he notes that like the move to the codex book, the move to text on a screen will change the text itself: "When it passes from the codex to the monitor screen the 'same text' is not longer truly the same because the new formal devices that offer it to its reader modify the conditions of its reception and its comprehension" (90).

He specifies the changes this move might entail:

1. the text will be available for manipulation by the reader
2. the form of the book (as a metaphor for the cosmos) will be lost and in that loss the "'readability' of the physical world, equated with a book in codex form, would be profoundly upset as well" (91).

Chartier's final insight: "The historian's musings proposed in the present work thus lead to a question essential in our own present time--not the overworked questions of the supposed disappearance of writing, which is more resistant than has been thought, but the question of a possible revolution in the forms of its dissemination and appropriation" (91).

Questions for consideration:

1. Does the Internet and the WWW make the all-inclusive library a possibility or is it still a dream?
2. What changes might we anticipate as the result of the move from the codex book to the screen? (Maybe another way of asking this is "How will literacy change?")
3. If we cannot anticipate the changes above, can we predict anything about the future of books and/or literacy?
4. Does the cataloging issue impact the move of text to the WWW?

Other books by Roger Chartier

1. Correspondence: Models of Letter-Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, 1997
2. On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices (Parallax: Re-Visions of Culture and Society), 1996
3. Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (New Cultural Studies), 1995
4. A History of Private Life: III Passions of the Renaissance, 1993
5. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution (Bicentennial Reflections on the French Revolutions), 1991
6. A History of Private Life: Passions of the Renaissance Vol 3, 1989
7. The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France, 1988
8. Cultural History : Between Practices and Representations, 1988
9. Frenchness in the History of the Book: From the History of Publishing to the History of Reading, 1988