Lire pour vivre: French Cultural History of Reading and Its Reception in Recent Czech Historiography

• Authors: Jaroslava Kašparová
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article deals with the origin and development of the academic discipline of history of reading and reading practices, originating in connection with new historical thinking in French historiography from the mid-twentieth century, with the so called Annales School or the nouvelle histoire. The history of book culture ceased to be understood as the traditional concept of merely history of the book and book printing; book studies were enriched by a sociological dimension and encompassed the history of reading, of reading materials, and of readers’ practices. The article sums up the results of French research and surveys the most substantial works, institutions and personalities which contributed to the origin of the new discipline, especially with the ideas of Roger Chartier. In his works, Chartier rejects both the view which does not take into account the period’s social, political and cultural practices in which the work originated and which explains the text only on the basis of the impersonal and automatic operation of the language (the history of the book without authors and readers), and also the psychologising approaches, which on the other hand attempt to interpret the origin of the text as the act of an author’s creative genius. An analysis of the form and the content of the oral, manuscript and printed texts (the method of noting or ordering of the text in the space given by the origin of the book – that is, in the context of a page, its layout, etc.) is inseparable from the study of history of the reader’s appropriations. Chartier borrowed the term appropriation from sociologists, but its application in the field of book studies makes it easier to recognise and explain phenomena such as the concept of ‘popular culture’ (in the sense of a certain method of using texts, transforming them and adapting them to the needs of the subsequent communities), which has led him to study texts which were in some way exceptional and those which were widely received. An important accomplishment by Chartier is the differentiation between two basic types of readers’ practices – intensive, oral reading; and extensive, visual reading. The transition from one form to the other was gradual and fluent and made possible the coexistence of both types. He then interprets the history of the book as the history of readers’ practices, and divides it into three basic stages – trois revolutions – in the development of writing and reading (the emergence of the codex; the expansion of silent reading as a consequence of the discovery of book printing and the associated rise of mass book production in the second half of the eighteenth century; and the rise of computer technology and internet reading and writing). Chartier concentrated his research primarily on the behaviour and activity of the reader, but this does not mean he understands readership practices only as the mere ‘anthropological’ history of reading methods, attitudes and gestures, and of reading spaces. A number of human factors took part in the production of the text, its circulation and interpretation (from the author in the widest sense of the word, through the editor, patron, printer, publisher and bookseller or colporteur as far as the reader), which are set into the specific historical situation and determined politically, socially and culturally. This article indicates in what ways the research of French and world historiography in the fi eld of the history of book culture can inspire Czech book studies, which still undervalues new trends aimed at the study of reading materials and readership practices and, unlike the general historiography, it does not take into account the new approaches in the spirit of the Annales School, is not even very much aware of such study (there is no institutional background in the Czech Republic able to develop such research consistently). Nevertheless, certain fundamentals of a newly and more widely concept of book studies have been posed. Chartier’s key works have still not been translated into Czech, but in 2007 the internationally famous and popular publication by the renowned specialist Albert Manguel, The History of Reading, at least came out in Czech translation. The author is convinced that research into the history of Czech book culture should continue both in classical book studies research aimed at the up to now partly unmapped history of book printing and history of book production (in spite of the recently published monumental Encyklopedie knihy by Petr Voit), and in research concerning the history of reading and reading materials, readership reception and readership practices.

Keywords

EN

culture history; history of reading; Annales School; Czech historiography

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 20-21
• Pages: 209-235

Contributors

author

Jaroslava Kašparová

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