An interdisciplinary, cross-century and/or comparative examination of topics in literary and cultural studies. Materials relating directly to French Studies will normally constitute at least 25% of all class materials.

This seminar is an introduction to the cultures of the written word in early modern Europe. It is designed to help graduate students from a variety of humanistic disciplines (literary studies, European languages and area studies, history, rhetoric, philosophy, theology, art history, musicology, theater, and performance studies, etc.) familiarize themselves with the various contexts in which texts, manuscripts, archives, and books, were produced in Europe from 1500 to 1900. The seminar’s central research question is better understanding how, among a variety of writing practices ranging from letter writing and autobiographical productions to record keeping, report writing, pamphleteering, accounting, or note taking, two specialized types of writing practices congealed during early modernity—the ones we currently designate as “literature” and the ones we refer to as “scholarship.” After discussing both sociological and philosophical accounts of what “practices” are—and how they develop, spread, and endure—, as well as anthropological and historical perspectives on writing practices, the seminar examines how “literature” and “scholarship” began to take shape around a specific sets of writing skills, and progressively differentiated as career tracks and, subsequently, as professions. To do so, we investigate a number of case studies documented by both primary and secondary sources, focusing in particular on the following issues: 1) how literary forms of writing interacted with domestic and private forms of writing (such as letter writing and autobiographical practices), 2) how scholarly productions specialized and/or attempted to reach beyond a learned audience, sometimes through processes of “literarization,” that is, by adopting “literary” forms and features, 3) how literary and learned writing practices were defined among other professionalized (or semi-professionalized) practices of the written word (including record keeping, administrative writing, archival practices, pamphleteering and what we now call “journalism”) 4) how the pressures of political and theological censorship affected the development of “literature” and “scholarship.” The case studies investigated are taken from across Europe and examined comparatively—but special attention is given to the ways in which literary and scholarly writings were created and put into circulation in three European countries: France, Italy and England. Reading knowledge of either French or Italian is therefore desirable, though not a pre-requisite. This seminar takes place in the Bancroft Library, with the aim of systematically introducing students to printed and manuscript materials in the library’s collections. Each session will involve a theoretical/historical discussion centered on secondary readings and hands-on collaborative work in small groups on documents from the collections. On-line printed matter and manuscript materials are also mobilized, both inside and outside of class. Final projects for this seminar can take a variety of shapes, besides the traditional seminar paper, such as a minute examination of a document (printed or manuscript) housed in the Bancroft Library, or the creation of a syllabus which would introduce undergraduate students to some of the materials and/or problems studied in the seminar. Readings include, in excerpted form: — Introductory/theoretical readings: • Special issue of Annales. Histoire. Sciences Sociales on “Pratiques d’écriture” (56th year, n° 4/5, Jul.-Oct., 2001), edited by Jacques Poloni-Simard. • Philip J. Boyes, Philippa M. Steele and Natalia Elvira Astoreca (ed.), The Social and Cultural Contexts of Historic Writing Practices (2021). • Theordore Schatzki, Social Practices (1996). • Michel Foucault, “What is an author”, preferably in the critical edition recently published by Dinah Ribard, 1969: Michel Foucault et la question de l’auteur. « Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur ? ». Texte, présentation et commentaire (2019) • Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). • Dinah Ribard and Nicolas Schapira (ed.), On ne peut pas tout réduire à des stratégies: pratiques d'écritures et trajectoires sociales (2013). — Historical/contextual readings: • Armando Petrucci, Libri, scrittura e pubblico nel Rinascimento: guida storica e critica (1979) and Writers and readers in medieval Italy: studies in the history of written culture (1995). • Etienne Anheim (ed), Statuts, écritures et pratiques sociales dans les sociétés de l’Italie communale et du Midi de la France (XIIe-XVe siècle). • Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (2011). • Pamela Smith and Benjamin Schmidt (ed.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Practices, Objects and Texts, 1400-1800 (2007). • Annabel Patterson, Censorship and Interpretation: The Conditions of Writing and Reading in Early Modern England (1984). • Oded Rabinowitch, The Perraults: A Family of Letters in Early Modern France (2018). • Jacob Soll, The Information Master: Jean Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System (2009). • Pauline Lemaigre-Graffier and Nicolas Schapira (ed), Archiver la Cour, XIVe-XXe siècles (papers from two study days, 2015 and 2016, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, available here: https://doi.org/10.4000/crcv.16313). • Frank Hillebrandt et al., Archival Practices. Producing Knowledge in Early Modern Repositories of Writing (2015), Filippo De Vivo and Maria Pia Donato, “Scholarly Practices in the Archives, 1500-1800” (2015). • Cynthia Meli, Le livre et la chaire: les pratiques d’écriture et de publication de Bossuet (2013). • Martyn Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (2008). • Jean-Louis Fournel and Matteo Residori (ed.), Ambassades et ambassadeurs en Europe (XVe-XVIIe siècles). Pratiques, écritures, savoirs (2020). • Paul Trolander, Literary Sociability in Early Modern England: The Epistolary Record (2014). • Giorgio Caravale, Libri pericolosi: censura e cultura italiana in età moderna (2022). • James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Culture and Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635 (2012). • Mark Netzloff, Agents Beyond the State: The Writings of English Travelers, Soldiers, and Diplomats in Early Modern Europe (2020). • Ronald Bedford et al. (ed), Early Modern Autobiography: Theories, Genres, Practices (2006).

Repeat Rules