The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe between the 14th and 18th Centuries

by Roger Chartier

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 handwritten books to the later, printed volumes - that were being put into circulation? In The Order of Books, 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: 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. The Order of Books will be welcomed by students and researchers of cultural history, and the history of reading in particular.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Books About Books, France, Academic, European History, Cultural

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Roger Chartier is a French historian and historiographer who is part of the Annales school. He works on the history of books, publishing and reading. He teaches at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, the Collège de France, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. I thought I would enjoy reading about the process that developed over the years to catalogue and keep records of books from the earliest records to now.

Instead it is a wooden treatise, to me a almost incomprehensible dissertation, of philosophical ramblings as to how the writer communicates and the reader comprehends.

It sounds like it should be interesting but the delivery was as dry as toast and dull as watching paint dry. Hopefully I communicated my thoughts on the quality of the author's writing better than he did in this book.

Bleh.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book belongs to the category I call "complicators" in which the author tries to show the complexity of a subject in opposition to what he or she sees as oversimplified versions by other authors. Ironically, Chartier could have achieved this with great simplicity.

“Inventorying titles, categorizing works, and attributing texts were all operations that made it possible to set the world of the written word in order.” vii

“[R]eading, by definition, is rebellious and vagabond.” Viii

“Reading takes no measures against the erosion of time (one forgets oneself and also forgets), it does not keep what it acquires, or does it poorly, and each of the places through which it passes is a repetition of the lost paradise.” 1 [quoting Michel de Certeau]

“Whereas the mere possession of a book had long signified cultural difference, with the conquests of printing, reading postures and typographical objects were gradually invested with that function.” 16


“…two propositions of Michel de Certeau. The first recalls, against all reductive attempts to deny the creative and inventive force of practice, that reading is never totally constraint and that it cannot be deduced from the texts it makes use of. The second stresses that the readers’ tactics, insinuated in the lieu propre (place of their own) produced by the strategies of writing, obey rules, follow logical systems, and imitate models.” 23

“In the tradition of the social history/of print as it has developed in France, books have readers but they do not have authors—or more precisely, authors do not enter into that history’s domain of competence: they are wholly the province of literary history and its time-honoured genres—biography, the study of a school or a current, or the description of an intellectual milieu.” 27-8

“Texts, books, and discourses really began to have authors…to the extent that authors became subject to punishment, that is, to the extent that discourses could be transgressive.” 30 [quoting Foucault]

[Elsie · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me, Chartier is too much history and not enough analysis. That is, he's good at what he does--thorough and eloquent. But he doesn't tell me enough about the implications of the historical processes he presents.

Also, I agree with Beatriz that we can never discuss the changes and causes of the European Renaissance ever again without discussing the exploitation of Latin America. That's Chartier and others, but in describing Europe as an isolated unit, changing of its own accord, we reproduce that violence.

[Valeriu Gherghel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pentru cei interesați de istoria lecturii (sînt unul dintre ei) o astfel de carte poate fi utilă. Autorul e un istoric reputat și a îngrijit împreună cu Guglielmo Cavallo vestita A History of Reading in the West (există versiuni în italiană și franceză), probabil cea mai solidă contribuție în domeniu. Să nu uităm cartea lui Alberto Manguel, O istorie a lecturii, redactată mai eseistic și mai plastic, de un om care se pricepe la scris, mai puțin interesat, totuși, de rigorile academice.

Avem în traducerea doamnei Maria Carpov una dintre lucrările lui Roger Chartier, cea intitulată Lecturi și cititori în Franța Vechiului Regim, la fel de utilă.

Volumul de față e alcătuit din trei eseuri: primul prezintă evoluția comunităților de cititori, al doilea investighează „nașterea” autorului, ultimul se referă la tratatele publicate în secolul al XVI-lea, epoca în care comunitățile cititorilor se confruntă cu abundența îngrijorătoare a cărților tipărite. Dacă Petrarca se plîngea că are prea puține cărți (adunase cam 200 de manuscrise, îndeosebi clasici latini), urmașii lui de peste două sute de ani au simțit că ele pot constitui o povară și o problemă fără soluție. Nu mai putem citi toate cărțile, nu avem timp să parcurgem nici măcar titlurile lor. Viața e prea scurtă: „When print produced a proliferation of titles and editions, it ruined all hope for an exhaustive collection” (p.63).

În fața acestui exces, unii savanți și-au propus să consemneze toate cărțile în așa-zisele „Biblioteci”, în care notau, în ordine alfabetică, titlul și, uneori, un mic rezumat al cărții, sperînd (în zadar) că vor redacta niște cataloage exhaustive. Speranța lor era din capul locului imposibilă. Astfel, medicul elvețian Conrad Gessner a tipărit în 1545 o masivă Bibliotheca universalis, în care a ordonat cîteva mii de titluri (în latină, greacă și ebraică). Exemplul lui a inspirat, desigur, alte minți la fel de visătoare. L-aș menționa doar pe italianul Anton Francesco Doni (pp.69-70, 73). Nu e bine să uităm faptul că patriarhul bizantin Photius alcătuise, încă din secolul al IX-lea, o „bibliotecă” de acest tip: Myriobiblon. Interesant este că patriarhul numește și rezumă o serie de cărți care s-au pierdut între timp.

Aceste cataloage monstruoase sînt „bibliotecile fără ziduri” pomenite de Roger Chartier: „The library of the future seems indeed to be in a sense a library without walls, as were the libraries that Gessner, Doni, and La Croix du Maine erected on paper” (p.89). (17.01.25, vineri)

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this in college for a class and just re-read it. It's very short and very academic. Less than 100 pages of writing, with an additional 30+ pages of Notes & Index. The author makes several interesting points about the definition of authorship, and the idea that the different ways of reading (aloud, alone in a room, on a screen) themselves have an impact on textual meaning. Still, I feel like this could have been condensed into a great essay rather than put out as an entire book.

[Ioana Hodor · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his very useful essays, Roger Chartier exposes some of the important aspects regarding the formation of the communities of readers, the authorship and its emergence and a final chapter regarding the evolution of the library, from the imaginary ones to the catalogues that include all the titles found in a library.
A very instructive book for critics and all those interested in the history of books, reading and culture. Definitely recommend!

[emilia · Rating 4 out of 5]

First essay ('Communities of Readers') was extremely rich and interesting to me. Second and third essays ('Figures of the Author' and 'Libraries without Walls') were also interesting but didn't tell me much I didn't already know. Overall a good read and very nice lyrical academic writing – that is, translated from the French.

[May Barbieri · Rating 3 out of 5]

O primeiro artigo (capitulo?) e o post scriptum são a melhor parte. O resto é legal de saber, mas nada life-changing. 3 stars.