Forms andMeaningsUniversity of Pennsylvania PressNEWCULTURALSTUDI ESJoan Dejean, CarrollSmith-Rosenberg,and Peter Stallybrass,EditorsA complete listing of the booksin the series appears at theback of this volumeForms andMeaningsTexts, Performances, and AudiencesfromCodex toComputerby RogerChartierUniversity of PennsylvaniaPressPhiladelphiaCopyright 1995 by the University of Pennsylvania PressAll rights reservedPrintedin the United States of AmericaLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataChartier, Roger, 1945-Forms and meanings: texts, performances, and audiences from codex tocomputer/by RogerChartier.p.cm. (New cultural studies)Collectionof four studies, twoof which have been revised forthis publication with new titles, and three of which were given asthe 1994 Rosenbach lectures at the University of Pennsylvania.Includesbibliographical references and index.Contents: Representations of the written word Princelypatronage and the economy of dedication Fromcourtfestivitytocity spectators Popular appropriations: the readers andtheir books.ISBN0-8122-3302-6(cloth). -ISBNo-8i22-i546-X(pbk.)i. Written communication History.2. Transmission of texts.3. Authors and patrons.4. Literature and society.5. Books andreading.I. Tide.II. Scries.P2H.C481995302.2'244:09 dc2095-16701CIPContentsAcknowledgmentsviiIntroductionrChapter i: Representations of the Written Word6Chapter 2: Princely Patronage and the Economy of DedicationChapter3: From Court Festivity to City Spectators43Chapter 4: Popular Appropriation: The Readers and TheirBooks83Notes99Selected Bibliography115Index12316254399115123This page intentionally left blank AcknowledgmentsA portionof Chapter i first appeared as "FromCodex to Screen," translatedby Laura Mason, Common Knowledge 3 (19): 160-71. An earlier version ofChapter3 appeared as "GeorgeDandin,oulesocialenrepresentation,"Annales, Histoire,Sciences Sociaks2(mars-avril1994):277-309.An earlierversion of Chapter 4 appeared as "PopularCulture:A ConceptRevisited,"translated by Daniel Thorburn, Intellectual History Newsletter 15 (1993): 3-13. Permission acknowledged to reprint these materials.Chapters2 and3 andtheIntroductionhave been translatedby Lydia G.Cochrane.Iam gratefulto Milad Doueihifor his help in translating the new materialin Chapter i and to David D. Hall for his assistance with Chapter 4.This page intentionally left blank IntroductionThefourstudiesbroughttogetherinthisvolume(threeofwhichweregivenattheUniversity ofPennsylvania as the1994 RosenbachLectures)have verydifferenttopics,scopes, andapproaches. They posea commonquestion, however. Howare we to understand the ways in which theformthat transmits a text toits readers or hearers constrains theproductionofmeaning?Theappropriationof discourseis notsomethingthathappenswithoutrules orlimits. Writing deploys strategies thatare meanttopro-duce effects, dictate a posture, and oblige the reader. It lays traps, which thereaderfallsinto without even knowing it, because the traps are tailored tothemeasure of a rebel inventiveness he orshe is always presumed topos-sess.Butthatinventiveness itselfdependsonspecificskillsandculturalhabits that characterize all readers, inasmuch as everyone belongs to a com-munity of interpretation.Thisdialectic ofimposedconstraintandinven-tion occurs where conventionsthatputgenres in a hierarchy; thatcodifyforms;andthatdistinguishbetween discourse thatis literal orfigurative,historical or fabulous, demonstrative or persuasive, encounter the schemesof perception and judgment inherent to each community of readers.Awarenessofthatdialecticleads tobringingintothesame historyeveryone who contributes, each one in his or her own place and role, to theproduction, dissemination, and interpretation of discourse. This is the proj-ect that gives unity tothis book. The two studies that make upits heart the first dedicated to the act and the economy of the dedication, the other totheperformance of a comedy ontheoccasionof a festiveevent at court focus on the relationship between writing and political power in the age ofprincely patronage. Two things are important here. First, we need to grasphowdependence onroyal largesse was translated into thevery practice ofliterature.Therewereconstraintsinherenttothepracticeofwriting apreferenceshowntoliterary genres thatlentthemselvesbesttopraise; aneed to write quickly, underpressure, tosatisfythepatron;a need to dis-pute the role of "author" withother claimants, beginning withthe book-seller-printersinatimewhenthemarketforbookscouldnotensure2Introductioneconomicindependenceand whenthe only recourse for authors without atitle, benefice, orofficialpost was theprotectionof themonarchorsomeotherhigh-placed person.Second,patronageimposedon works certain places, times,andformsofrepresentationthatgovernedthemeanings withwhichtheywerein-vested. A comedyperformedat courtas part of a festiveritual toexaltthegloryandthepowerof thekinghad meanings forthecourtiersinatten-dance thatwere notidenticaltothemeaningsthattheaudiencein Parisfoundin the play, or that readers whoencounterthe play only in a printededitionsee init.Whenthe"same" textis apprehendedthroughvery dif-ferentmechanisms of representation,itis nolongerthesame. Each of itsformsobeysspecificconventionsthatmoldand shape the work accordingtothe laws of thatformand connectit,indifferingways, withotherarts,other genres, and othertexts. If we want to understand theappropriationsand interpretationsof a textin theirfullhistoricity we need toidentifytheeffect,in terms of meaning, that its material formsproduced.This perspective is radically differentfromall approaches that holdtheproductionof meaning toresult solely fromthe impersonal andautomaticfunctioning of language. When that position(which found its most blatantformulationin the"NewCriticism")eliminates all individual subjectivity,considers the material forms of the inscriptionof discourse withoutsignifi-cance,andabolishes any distinctionbetween discursive andnondiscursivepractices,itmakes a fundamental decisiontoavoidall historical compre-hension of works. Itis a basic principle of historical comprehension to lookclosely, in each historical configuration, at theconstructionof thevariouscategories that are manipulated for the designation,description,and classi-fication of the various modes of discourse. This requires that we break witha universal projectionof conceptsand criteria which are also inscribed intime.Amongthesearethenotionsforgedattheendoftheeighteenthcenturytodescribeaestheticinvention,tofoundliterary property,ortoassert the universality of judgments of taste. Restoringthe variability of thecategoriesputinto play for readingand interpretation(orrestoringtheircompetitiveuse)requires thatwe take thoseworks back tothesituationsthat led to their production,that dictated their forms, and, for that reason,that shaped their intelligibility.Wecandothisonseveral levels. Themostambitious(andalsotheriskiest)approach aims at identifying the major changes that have upset themodes of the inscriptionand transmission of discourse. This involves mak-ing a connection,over a very long time span, between the greatrevolutionsIntroduction3of writtenculture:the revolutionbetween the secondand fourth centuriesthatchangedthevery structureof thebookby substitutingthecodex fortheroll;themid-fifteenth-centuryrevolutionthatinventeda newway ofreproducingtextsandmakingbooks;therevolutionsthattransformedreading practices, first in theMiddle Ages, thenduringthesecondhalf oftheeighteenthcentury. We are notthe first toraisesuchquestions.Vico,Malesherbes, and Condorcet,for instance, saw the potentialof the variouswriting systems, from hieroglyphs to the alphabet and then of the inventionand diffusionof printing, for profoundlymodifying not only conditionsforthe conservation and the communication of knowledge,but also the modesof the exercise and criticism of power.Noting how variations in theformof textsaffecttheir possible mean-ing can also be done on a smaller scale. One way is by deciphering differentbutcontemporary modesofcirculationandsortsofrepresentationofa"same"work:oneseventeenth-century example mightbea dramatic textperformedat court,presented toan urban Parisian audience, andprinted,eitherseparately orwithotherplays. Anotherwaywouldbetofollow,withina narrowtimeframe,successivepublished versionsofatextoracorpus of texts available tovery differentpublics. Thisis thecase withthechapbooks thatoffereda greaternumberof purchasers ofa humblersortanopportunitytoacquire textsthat,duringtheiroriginalpublishedlife,reached only the restricted world of the wealthiest readers.Withthecasestudiesandbird's-eye viewspresentedinthisbook,1hopetosketchseveral perspectives ofa moregeneralsort.Thefirstis acritique of some of thecategories mostcommonly usedby historians. Byplacing the notion of appropriationat the heartof my inquiry, Ihopetodemonstratethelimitationsof twoapproaches thathave longbeencom-monpractice: the qualification of cultural productsby the social identity oftheir public, and the establishment of the meaning of those productsbasedontheirlinguistic function alone.Settingupan oppositionbetween for-malism and "sociologism" or between structuralist criticism and social his-torya game bothparties found reassuring is nolongerrelevant today.Thecritiqueofthenotionof"popularculture"thattakes thehistory ofpublishing strategies and reading habits as its base suggests the need toshifttoa pointof view that recognizes social differencesin contrastingcustomsand that holds the meanings that readers (or spectators)assign to a text tobe plural and mobile.Weneedtobewary oftwothings.Thefirstisbeingtoohastytoattribute a generic and univocal social qualification to cultural practices. If it4Introductionis sure that there were readers (of bothsexes)who belongedto the part ofancien regime society that could be called "thepeople," it is less sure that wecanidentify,in its radical specificity,a "popular" way of reading. To dosowould require lookingcarefully at communities of readers whose principlesof coherence were far from being brutally dictated by their economic condi-tion alone, and identifying thecomplex of skills, conventions,and percep-tionsthatmade uptheresourcesandtheconstraintsby means of whichtheyapprehendedwrittenmatter.Thesecondissettinguptoorigidadichotomy, making tactics of appropriation the only resource of powerlesspeople who could only re-use or use for other purposes what the dominantparts of society imposed on them. Undeniably, reading is exemplary of thatdivisionoffunctions, because itis theconstructionofa meaningonthebasis of a text ora book that was notproducedby thatreader. But what istrueofreadingis notnecessarily trueofall "popular"cultural practices.Other practices thepractices of ordinary writingofferoneexample areindeedappropriations(of models,of codes, of forms, of objects), but theycreate a place of their ownand presuppose a fixing process and a duration.They,too,werestrategies.Thereis,therefore,nonecessaryconnectionbetween the social definition of appropriations and the type of practice thatserves as a vehicle forthem.Anotherquestionconcernstherelationsbetweenliterary textsandtheirsocial world.Whatis involvedhere is thejustificationandthe perti-nenceofa historicalreadingthat,while itrejectsall reductionof literaryworks to the status of mere historical documents(which destroys their veryspecificity), attempts to reconstruct their conditionsof possibility and intel-ligibility. Such conditionsare in theconstraints that govern the practice ofwriting(forexample,inconstraintsdirectlyandobligatorilyconnectedwiththepatronagerelationship). Theyalso involve the way in whichtheliterary textshiftsand transforms theordinary discourseand the practicesthatare itsmatrix. Thisline ofinvestigation is illustratedby thestudy ofMoliere'sGeorge Dandin, whichposes a dual question. Whatsocial realitywas represented in thiscomedy,and withwhat meanings diditsdifferentpublics, at courtandin thecity, invest it? Theanswer obviously lies attheintersectionoftwolinesofinvestigation:ahistoryoftheformsoftherepresentationofthetextandareconstructionofitsvariousreceptions,and an analysis of the way thattext presents themechanisms thatgo intotheconstructionofsocial identities.Astrongconnectioncan thusbe re-establishedbetweenthecircumstancesthatgovernedthewritingoftheplay in this case, a royal command for a festive event to celebrate the gloryIntroduction5ofthemonarch anditsmeaning(better,itsmeanings)foritsseven-teenth-century spectators.A final concern underlying this book is a reflection on ourown times.How are we to situate, within the long term of history, the transformationspromised and already made possible by widespread use of a new representa-tionof the written:the electronictext thatsubstitutes for the printed ob-jectsthattrace theirancestry tothecodex?To answer such a question wemust do two things. First, we need to examine the changes that have begun,atan uneven rate,in theworldtodayand place them wheretheybelongwithin die revolutions in techniques for reproductionof texts, in theformsofthebook,andinmannersofreading.Then,takingintoaccounttheeffectsof meaning producedby the material aspects of writing, we needtoreflect on the many consequences of our entry into the age of the electronicrepresentation of texts and their reading on screens. These challenge all thetraditionalcategoriesthathaveservedtoidentifyanddefineworks;tofoundtheconceptof literary propertyorcopyright;andtoorganize thepractices of the description, conservation, and reading of texts. Contrary totheclaims of historians insearch of legitimacy, thebackward glance is oflittle help in predicting what the future will bring. Because it is comparative,however,thatbackward glance can enable ustomeasure more accuratelythe changes thatare revolutionizingourrelations with writtenculture.Itcanalso remind us thatany comprehensionof a text is necessarily depen-dentonaknowledgeofthematerialformsithastaken.Thehistorian'sanalysis is neither propheticnornostalgic:it has thedual task of pleadingforthe preservation and protectionof the evidence of a written culture thatfor five centuries has been identified with the circulation of printed matter,and of making therevolutionof thepresent momentmore intelligible arevolutionas radical as theonethat,seventeen oreighteencenturiesago,imposed a new form on the book.i. Representations of the Written WordIwouldlike toopenthisessaybyconsideringthreeeighteenth-centurytexts Vico's Scienza nuova(1725), Condorcet'sEsquisse d'un tableau bisto-rique des progres de I'esprithumain(1793),andMalesherbes's Rzmontmnces(I7 7 S ) eachin its ownmanner questioningtherelations between sym-bolic activities and thestructures or modes of transmission of theoral andwritten. All three aim to identify the crucial moments that determine eitherthe course of nations, the progress of the human mind, or the history of themonarchy. The methodis similar in each: ages and epochs aredistinguishedbytheircharacteristic formsof writingormodesof textualtransmission,calling attentiontotheintellectual, social, or political significanceof thosefundamentalbreaksthathave transformed theinscription,recording,andcommunication of speech.In the Fourth Book ofNew Science, entitled "TheCourse Nations Run,"Vico identifies three distinguishing characteristics of the three epochs theage of gods, theage of heroes, and the age of men that he takes overfromtheancientEgyptians.1Eachperiodis characterized bya particular lan-guageandwritingsystem, intimately related,since for Vicotheoriginoflanguages and the originof letters "were by nature conjoined"(138). Theage of godswas marked by "adivine mental language[formed]bymutereligiousacts or divine ceremonies"(340). The hieroglyphs are the charac-ters that express this mute language. Itis one incapable of abstraction andresorts instead to objects or their representations:Thefirst[characters]were divine,... used,as wehave shownabove,by allnationsintheirbeginnings.Andtheywerecertainimaginativeuniversals,dictatednaturallyby thehumanmind'sinnatepropertyofdelightingintheuniform.Since they could not achieve this by logical abstraction,they did it byimaginativerepresentation.Tothesepoeticuniversalstheyreducedalltheparticularspecies belonging to each genus.(341)The second language, from the age of heroes, "was said by the Egyptians tohavebeenspokenbysymbols"(144).ComposedequallyofmuteandRepresentationsof the WrittenWord7articulated speech, it used signs and manipulated "metaphors, images, sim-ilitudes, or comparisons, which, having passed into articulate speech, sup-plied all the resources of poetic expression"(144). This language marks thefirst step in a process towardabstraction that reaches its conclusion with thefullyarticulated speech of the third language and the third species of charac-ters,by means of which "ofa hundredandtwentythousandhieroglyphiccharacters... they made a few letters"(341).Vico describes thisgraphic alphabetic language as one that uses "vul-gar letters," and he repeatedly discusses its origins.Rejecting opinionsthatcreditSanchuniathonwiththediscovery of thealphabet ortheEgyptianCecropsorthePhoenecianCadmuswiththeintroductionofalphabeticwritingtoGreece, he concludes thattheGreeks "with supreme genius,inwhich they certainly surpassed all nations, took over these geometric formstorepresent thevariousarticulatedsounds"(146). Theinventionofthealphabetmarks aturningpointintheevolutionofcivilizationVicode-scribes. Letters are "vulgar"because they break the priestly and aristocraticmonopolyoverimagesandsigns. Alphabeticwritingandvulgar speech"area rightof thepeople"(145)and,indeed,a guaranteeofliberty, "invirtue of thissovereignty over languagesandletters,thefreepeoplemustalso be masters of their laws, for they impose on the laws the sense in whichthey constrain the powerful to observe them" (342).Thetypologyof languagesand letters has a doublevalence. Onemayunderstandit historically as scanning thecourse of nationsand setting therhythmforthesuccessionofepochs.Logically, however,thisdiversity oflanguages and writing systems must also be understood synchronically:"We must establish this principle: that as gods, heroes, and men began at thesame time(for they were,afterall, men whoimagined thegodsand believedtheir ownheroic nature tobe a mixture of the divine and human natures), sothesethreelanguages beganat thesame time,each having its letters,whichdeveloped along with it.(149)Whetherthemultiplicityoflanguages andwritingsystemscame se-quentiallyorsimultaneously, Vico'sclassification maybe translatedinto avariety of registers.2 In rhetorical terms, it associates a particular trope witheach stage: metaphor widi the hieroglyphs, whichafforda way of speakingvia objects or their representation;metonymy with die heroic or symboliccharacters, whichdesignate objects orbeings by theirparticular qualities;and synecdoche with the vulgar letters or alphabetic writing,which permittheestablishment ofabstract categories.3 Inpoliticalterms, thisclassifica-8Chapter itionlinkstheocracytodivinewriting,aristocraticgovernmenttoheroicsymbols,andpopularfreedom,beitrepublicanormonarchic,tovulgarletters.In terms of knowledge,the typologyof writing leads from mysticaltheologyor thescience of hieroglyphiclanguage,totheauthorityof con-tracts, finally to the verification of facts that the alphabet makes possible. Inall three cases, die mostimportantbreak comes with the invention of alpha-betic writing an inventiondiat makes abstraction possible, thatinstituteslegality and equality, and thatemancipates knowledgefromthe all-power-fulholdof divine reason or an absolute state authority.IntheThirdEpochofhisOutlinesof anHistoricalViewof theHumanMind,Condorcet, too,strongly emphasizes the impact of this break.4 Onlytheinventionofthealphabetcouldcarrythesciences forward. Thetwoearlierformsof writing hieroglyphsand writing "in whichconventionalsigns are affixedtoevery idea, which is the only one that the Chinese are atpresent acquainted with"(47) had allowed for the confiscation and con-trolof knowledgeby thepriestly andteachingcastes."Thefirstmodeofwriting,whichrepresentedthingsbyapaintingmoreorlessaccurate,eitherofthething itselforofananalogousobject"(44), has been trans-formedby thepriestsintoa secretwritingthatwas theexpressionof anallegorical language. This allegorical language was invested with a meaningsacred tothe peoplewho now usedanotherwritingsystem "in which theresemblance of [the]objects was nearly effaced,and in which the only signsemployedwereinsomeway purelyconventional"(44).Thusendowedwithitsownlanguageandwriting,the"secretdoctrine"ofthepriestsfounded,inthisstateof scriptural dualism,"themostabsurd creeds,themostsenselessmodesof worship,andthemostshamefuland barbarouspractices.... All progress of thesciences was at a standstill: some even ofthose which had been enjoyed by preceding ages were lost to the generationthat followed"(46-47).Because alphabetic writingbreaks withevery formofrepresentation,becauseitstripsfiguresandsignsof theirmysteries,andbecause it takesawayfromtheprieststheirmonopolyoverinterpretation,thealphabetgives toall people"equalright to the knowledge of truth." Thusis assured"forever the progress of the human race"(13). It is, then,notthe politicalfreedomaffordedby the regime of the polis, but the introductionin Greeceof a new way of representinglanguage by "a small number of signs[that]servedtoexpress every thing"(12), thatrelegates thepriests toapurelycultic statusand thatclears the way for the advancement of knowledge.InhisIntroduction,CondorcetdelineatesthestagesintheprogressoftheRepresentationsof the WrittenWord9humanmindby outliningthedifferentmodesof knowledgepossible foreachepoch.Knowledgeis conjecturalandpsychologicalforthefirstage,precedingtheriseofarticulatedlanguage("Wecan have nootherguidethananinvestigationofthedevelopmentofourfaculties").Itremainshypothetical,butfoundedonthe collectionof historicalfactsandanthro-pologicalobservationsforthesecondperiod,whichendswiththeinven-tionof alphabetical writing.Knowledgebecomescertainand truly histor-ical for the thirdage, for "from the period in which alphabetical writing wasknowninGreece,history is connectedby an uninterruptedseries offactsand observations with the period in which we live, with the present state ofmankind in die mostenlightenedcountries of Europe,and thepicture ofthe progress and advancement of the humanmindbecomes strictly histor-ical"(14-15).Groundedin epistemology,thissystem of periodizationistied,as inVico,torevolutionsintheformsofcommunication:firsttheformation of articulated language,next the inventionof the alphabet.5Within this schema, Condorcet inscribes another revolution, bound tothe inventionof printing.In the EighthEpochof the Esquisse, he character-izes in three ways theeffectsof theinventionthat"multipliesindefinitely,and at a small expense, copies of any work"(120). First, where passions areexcited by live exchanges in assemblies of people,theinstructionthatanyindividualcan receive insilenceandsolitudefrombooksencouragesthecoolexercise ofreason,critical judgment,andrationalexaminationof allopinions.Withprinting,a new species of tribune is established, from which are communicatedimpres-sions less lively butat thesame time more solid and profound;fromwhich isexercised over thepassions an empire less tyrannical, butover reason a powermore certain and durable; where all the advantage is on the side of truth, sincewhattheart may losein point of seductionis morethancounterbalanced bythe illumination[the enlightenment]it conveys.(121)Intellectagainst passion, enlightenmentagainst seduction:the second;effectofprintingis thesubstitutionofevidencebasedonreasonforbe-liefsdrawnoutbyrhetoricalargument.Thecertitudeandirrefutabilityofthetruth,conceivedaccordingtothemodelsof logicaldeductionandmathematical reasoning,are thus fundamentally differentiated fromthe ill-founded convictionsimposed and reinforced by the rhetorical art of persua-sion.Finally, throughprinting,the truthsthusestablishedcan be revealedtoall. Whereas orality necessarily presupposesthe fragmentation of discur-sive exchanges and thecloisteringof knowledge,the circulationof printedioChapteritextsbrings withit theuniversal exercise of reason:"Itis tothepress weowe the possibility of spreading those publications which the emergency ofthemoment,orthetransientfluctuationsof opinionmay require,and ofinterestingtherebyinany questiontreatedina single pointofview,theuniversalityofmenspeakingthesamelanguage"(122).ForCondorcet,then,"publicopinion,"so crucial totheprogress of thehumanmind,is acreation of the printing revolution.If, in contrast to fluid, wary, locally heldbeliefs,publicopinionisstable, certain,anduniversal, thisisbecause ofprinting. By permitting the exchange of ideas withoutphysical presence, byconstitutinga unified public outof dispersed individuals, the printing presshas constructedan invisible andimmaterial tribunal,whose reason-basedjudgmentsapply to everyone:Apublicopinionisformed,powerfulby thenumberofthose whoshareit,energetic,becausethemotivesthatdetermineitact uponall mindsat once,though at considerabledixStances from each other. A tribunal is erected in favorof reason and justice, independent of all human power, from the penetration ofwhich it is difficulttoconcealany thing, from whose verdictthere is noescape.(121)Theuniversality thatprintingpromisesremains partialandincom-plete,however. Two additionalconditionsmustbe metfor its full achieve-ment.First, theremustbe universal "publicinstruction"thatwould breakthe Church'scontrolover educationand wouldgive to everyone the neces-sary competence toread thebooks"adaptedtoevery class of readers, andeverydegreeofinstruction"(122).Second,theremustbeestablished acommonlanguage, one capable of eliminating the contradiction implicit ina formulation suchas "theuniversality of peoplewhospeak thesame lan-guage." This universal language cannot be that of mathematics, which "nec-essarily divides societies into twoextremely unequalclasses:theonecom-posedof menunderstandingthelanguageandthereforeinpossessionofthe key to the sciences, the other of those who, incapable of learning it, findthemselves reduced almost to an absolute impossibility of acquiring knowl-edge"(240).Condorcetrefusesto constructthe universal language out ofscientificidiomforthesame reasons thatherejects thenotionof literaryproperty:heopposestheconfiscation ofknowledgebya minority.6Heconcludes,consequently,thatan original universal languagemustbe cre-ated, one translatable into every vernacular tongueand capable of formaliz-ing all acts of comprehension,logical reasoning, and rules of practice. Here,too,theformsgiventotherepresentationanddiffusionofwritingareparamount. This universal language uses signs toexpress "eitherthedirectRepresentations of the Written Word11objects, or these well-defined collectionsconstitutedof simple and generalideas, whichare tobe foundormay be introducedequally indieunder-standingsof all mankind;or lastly, the general relations of these ideas,theoperationsof the human mind,the operationspeculiar toany science, anddiemodeofprocessinthearts"(239).ItsfulleffectivenessreliesuponrecoursetowhatCondorcetdesignates "technicalmethods" infact,thematerialbasesforcognitiveoperations.Thus,forexample,tablesandcharts,madeeasier andmoreavailableby printing,enable thereadertograsp the relationsandcombinationsthat link facts,objects, numbers,andformulas.Thelimitlessperfectibility ofhumankind,promisedandmadepossible by the universal language that will endoweach field of knowledgewith the certainty of mathematics, is thus closely bound up with the techni-cal invention that alone could bring the possibilities openedby alphabeticalwriting to their final and mostbeneficialfulfillment.In hisRemontmnces, writtenin 1775 in the name of the Cour des Aides,asovereigncourtofwhichhewastheFirstPresident,Malesherbesalsoinsistsonthefundamentalshiftbroughtaboutby theinventionof print-ing.7 In this text, the purpose of which is to denouncethe despotic tenden-cies of themonarchy, Malesherbes lookstohistory tomake a case for thenecessaryreturntothe"primitiveconstitutionof monarchy"(272).Thesecretivenessof theworkingsofgovernmentandthestiflingofall publiccomplaint thecharacteristics, thatis, of despotism find theirorigins inthenation'spast. Malesherbes divides this pastintothreeages, butas hisobject is notthe progress of civilization butnational history, his periodiza-tiondoesnotcorrespondexactlytotheoneCondorcetwouldproposetwenty years later.Althoughwriting was already knownin the first age, the "time of ourfirstancestors,"itwasnotyetinvestedwithjudicialandadministrativeauthority. Theseresidedentirelyinspeech. Hence thepublicauthority ofjudicialdecisionsorallydeliveredby diekinginfrontoftheassemblednation in the Champ de Mars, or by the nobles, "eachin his owndomain,"hearing the petitionsof plaintiffsand garnering the opinionsof those pres-ent. Hence,too,the instability, uncertainty, and variability of the law. Thisage of "verbal conventions"is succeededby the"ageof writing," in whichlaw is fixed, jurisprudence made exact, and the rights of citizens establishedonthebasisof commonprinciples. Thisevolutioncomesata highprice,however,asadoublesecrecyisinstalled:thesecrecyofadministration,henceforthseparatedfromjustice, andthesecrecy ofjudicial proceduresnowbasedonwrittendocuments.Theusurpationofjustice bya"neworderof citizens,"themagistrates,correspondstothesecretiveness of an12Chapter iadministration that acts throughthe king's writtenorders instead of publicproclamations.Farfromfortifyingthepublicfreedom propertoamon-archy,thejudicial andadministrativeuseofwritingplantedtheseeds ofdespotic corruption(270-72).Thissecrecy is all die moreintolerable in that it survives into a subse-quentage.Theageofprintingis,ineffect,theerainwhich"theartofprintinghas multipliedtheadvantages that writinghas given tomen,andhasabolishedits shortcomings."Thepublic natureof petitions,delibera-tions, and decisions is nolongerincompatible withthe firm establishmentandstability of law. As will be the case withCondorcet,the printedword,which allows for detachedand reflexive reading, quiets the enthusiasms andpassions that can take overa "tumultuous assembly." Andas inCondorcet,the printedwordprovidesthe very foundationfor the formation of a sov-ereign public: "thejudges themselves may be judgedby an informed Pub-lic." It is in the name of this public that the assembled representatives of thenation,that is, the Estates General, should be able to examine, discuss, andcriticizetheactsoftheroyaladministration.Butas thekinghas notyetdecidedtoconvene theEstates General, this task of representation is dele-gated to substitutes: on the one hand, to the sovereign courts, on the othertomen of letters.In the new public space created by the circulation of theprinted word,these men of letters stand in for "those who, endowed with anatural eloquence, were listened to by our fathers in the Champ de Mars orin the public trials"(272-73).Several monthsearlier, in January 1775, Malesherbes haddeveloped asimilaridea in his inauguralspeech for the Academic Francaise. There,heasserted thefullsovereignty of the public erected as a supreme tribunal:ThePublic is avidly curiousaboutobjectsaboutwhich it was formerlyindif-ferent.ItiscreatedintoaTribunalindependentofall powersandthatallpowersrespect; itappreciates all talents andrecognizesall merit.Andinanenlightenedcentury in which every citizen can speaktotheentire nationinprint, those who have the talent to move and instruct, that is to say, those Menof Letters,are to a dispersed public what the orators of Rome and Athens wereto an assembled public. This truth mat I expose in front of the assembly of theMenof Lettershasalready beenpresentedtocertain Magistrates, andnonerefusedtorecognizethetribunalofthePublic as thesovereignjudgeof alljudges of theEarth.Malesherbes thus formulates die notion that the judgmentsof the public apublicthatexists onlybecause of thecirculationof theprintedwordguides die opinionsof all other judges, including the king, "certain never toRepresentations of the Written Word13errinhis judgmentsbecause he judgesonlyonthebasis of theinfallibletestimony of an enlightenednation," the magistrates charged with uphold-ing the rule of law, ortheacademicians, celebrated by Malesherbes as "thesupreme Judges of Literature."8 Like the lawyers and public representativesoftheRemontrances, theMenofLetters(oratleasttheirsanior pars) arehereinvestedwithatruepublicofficeandareendowedwitha judicialcompetencethatwas, duringtheancien regime,thebasis ofall authority.Opposed,as in Condorcet, totheage of orality, printculture redefinestheexercise of power, social roles, and intellectual practices.By organizing large-scale periodizationaccording tothe mutationsoftheformsofinscription,transmission,andrecordingofdiscourse,Vico,Condorcet, and Malesherbes inaugurate in theeighteenthcentury a set ofreflectionsthat continuetoday in the works of Walter Ong,9 Jack Goody,10and Henri-Jean Martin.11 All three identify the majortransformations thatoverturnthemodesoftextualcirculationandtransmission.Itisinthiscontext that I would inscribe this essay."Booksno longerexercise the power they once did;in thefaceof thenewmeans of informationandcommunicationtowhichwe will haveac-cessinthefuture,bookswillnolongermasterourreasonandourfeel-ings."12 This remark by Henri-Jean Martin will serve as the pointof depar-ture for these reflections. They are meant to locate and designate theeffectsof a revolution that is dreaded by some and applauded by others,asserted asineluctable or simply believed possible: in short, the radical transformationofthemodesofproduction,transmission,andreceptionofthewrittenword.Dissociatedfromtheformsin whichwe are usedtoencounteringthem(books,newspapers,periodicals),texts will henceforthbedestinedforan electronic existence; composedon the computeror digitalized, con-veyedbyelectronicprocesses,theywillreachdiereaderonscreeninamachine-readable form.I have, myself, a dual perspective on this future(which may already beapresent),inwhichtextsaredetachedfromtheformofthebookthatemergedin the West seventeen or eighteencenturies ago. One perspectiveisthatofa historianofwrittenculture whois primarilyconcernedwithuniting in a single history the study of texts(canonical or ordinary, literaryor common)with the conditionsof their transmission and dissemination,theirreaders, theiruses, and theirinterpretations.A secondperspective is14Chapter ilinked to the fact that I was a participant (to a modest degree) in the projectoftheBibliothequedeFrance,ofwhichoneoftheessentialaxesistheconstitutionofa majorcorpusofelectronic textsthatcan betransmittedovergreatdistancesandthatmaybecometheobjectofanewkindofreading, made possible througha computer-assisted reading post.My first question, asked fromboth these points of view, is, Howdo wesituate within die long history of the book, of reading, and of relationstothe written word, the revolutionthat has been predicted, has in fact alreadybegun, which transforms the book(or the written object) as we know itwith its quires, its leaves, its pages intoan electronic text tobe read on ascreen? Answering this question requires drawing sharp distinctionsamongthree kinds of transformations, the relations among which are still unclear.The first revolution was technical: in die mid-fifteenthcentury it completelychangedthemeans ofreproducingtextsandproducingbooks.Withtheintroductionofmovable typeandtheprintingpress, manuscript copiesceased tobe the only available means for the multiplication and circulationoftexts. Hencethestress thathas been placed onthiscritical momentinWestern history, which is said to mark "theappearance of the book" and tobe a "revolution."13In recent years, the emphasis has shifted somewhat, to stress the limitsof this first revolution.Itis nowclear thatGutenberg'sinventiondidnotalter the essential structures of the book. Untilat least the beginning of thesixteenth century, die printed book remained very much dependenton themanuscript.Itimitateditspredecessor'slayout,scripts,and appearance,and, above all, it was completedby hand: the hand of die illuminatorwhopaintedornamentedorhistoriatedinitialsorminiatures;thehandofthecorrectororemendator,whoaddedpunctuation,rubrics,andtides;thehand of the reader who inscribed notes and marginalia on the page.14 Morefundamentally,afterGutenbergasbefore,thebookcontinuedtobeanobjectcomposedoffoldedsheets,gatheredbetweencoversandboundtogether.TheWesternbookachieved theformitwouldretaininprintculturetwelveorthirteencenturiesbeforetheintroductionofthenewtechnology.A look East offersa secondreason toreevaluate die printrevolution.StudyofChina,Korea,andJapan reveals thattechniquespropertotheWest were notthe necessary condition,for those Asian cultures possessednotonly writingbutwidespread printing.15Movable type was knowninthe East; it was invented and used there well before Gutenberg's time; terracotta characters were used in China in die eleventh century, and texts wereRepresentations of the Written Word15printedwithmetalliccharacters inthirteenth-centuryKorea.Theuseofmovable type in theEast unlikethepost-GutenbergOccident,remained,however, limited and discontinuous,monopolizedby emperor and monas-teries.Butthisdoesnotimply theabsence ofa large-scale printculture.That was made possible by another technique: xylography, or the engravingof texts on wood, which were thenprintedby rubbing them. Xylography,documentedin Korea afterthe mid-eighthcentury and in Chinafromthelateninthcentury,introducedtoMingandQingChinaand TukogawaJapanthebroadcirculationofprint,commercialpublishingenterprisesindependentof the state, a dense network of libraries and reading societies,and broadly diffusedpopular genres.Itis not,therefore, necessary tomeasure the printcultureof Easterncivilizationssolely bythestandards of Western techniques,as thoughbydefault.Xylography has its particular advantages. Itis betteradapted thanmovable type to languages that possess a large number of characters or, as inJapan,apluralityofscripts;itsustainsapowerfulassociationbetweenhandwritingandprint,because thewoodisengravedfromcalligraphicmodels;and,because of die durability of well-conserved wood, it permitstheadjustment ofprintrunsaccordingtodemand.Suchconsiderationsshouldlead us toa more balanced appreciation of Gutenberg'sinvention.Undeniably fundamental, it is notthe only technologycapable of ensuringthe broad dissemination of the printedbook.Ourcurrent revolutionis obviously moreextensive than Gutenberg's.Itmodifiesnotonly the technologyfor reproductionof the text,but eventhemateriality of theobject thatcommunicatesthetexttoreaders. Untilnow,theprintedbookhas been heir tothe manuscript in itsorganizationby leaves and pages, its hierarchy of formats(fromthelibra da banco tothelibellus) , and its aids toreading(concordances, indices, tables).16 The sub-stitutionofscreenforcodexisa farmoreradical transformationbecause:itchanges methodsoforganization,structure,consultation,even theap-pearanceofthewrittenword.Sucha revolutionrequiresotherterms ofcomparison.The long-termhistory of reading provides us withthe essentials. Twofundamentalchanges organize its chronology. Thefirst accents atransfor-mation of the physical and corporal modes of the act of reading and stressesthe decisive importanceofa shiftfromnecessarily oralized reading, indis-pensable for the reader's comprehension,to reading that may be silent andvisual.17 Thisrevolutiontook place duringthe long MiddleAges, as silentreading,initially restricted(betweentheseventhandninthcenturies)to16Chapter imonastic scriptoria, spread to the world of schoolsand universities(by thetwelfthcentury)and thentolay aristocrats(twocenturieslater). Its pre-conditionwas theseparationofwordsby IrishandAnglo-SaxonscribesduringthehighMiddleAges,anditsconsequenceswereconsiderable,creating thepossibility of reading more quickly, and so reading more textsand more complex texts.Thisperspective evokestwoobservations.First,simply becausethemedieval West learned toread visually and in silence, we neednotassumethatancientGreeks andRomanswereunable todoso. Theabsence ofseparations between wordsdid notprohibit silent reading in antique civili-zationsamongpopulationsforwhomwrittenandvernacular languageswerethesame.18Thepractice,commonamongtheancients,ofreadingaloud, for othersorfor oneself, shouldnotbe attributedtoan inability toread with the eyes alone(which was practiced in the Greek worldfromthesixth century before Christ) ,19 but to a cultural conventionthat powerfullyassociated text and voice, reading, declamation,and listening.20 Moreover,oralized reading persisted into the modernperiod whensilent reading hadalreadybecomeanordinarypracticeforeducatedreaders,betweenthesixteenthandeighteenthcenturies. At thattime,readingaloudremainedthefundamental cementof diverse formsof sociability familial,learned,worldly, or public and the reader envisioned by numerousliterary genreswas one whoread or listened toothers. In Golden Age Castile, leer and o/r,ver and escuchar were quasi-synonymous, and reading aloud was the impliedreading of very differentgenres: all the poetic genres, the humanistcomedy(consider theCekstina) ,thenovelin all its formsuntil Don Quixote, evenhistory itself.21Thesecondobservationtakes theformof a question:Shouldwenotplace greater stress on the role of the written word than on ways of reading?If such is the case, then the twelfth century marks a critical rupture, for thenwriting ceased to be strictly a means of conservation and memorizationandcame tobe composedand copiedfor reading that was understood as intel-lectual work. In schools and universities, the monastic model of writing wassucceeded by the scholastic one. In monasteries, books were notcopiedtobe read. Rather,they hoardedknowledgeas thepatrimonial wealthof thecommunity and sustained uses that were, above all, religious(the ruminatioofa textthatwas trulyincorporatedby thefaithful,meditation,prayer).Urbanschoolschangedeverything:theplace of bookproduction,whichpassed fromscriptorium to stationer'sshop; the book's forms, in the multi-plication of abbreviations, marks, glosses,and commentaries; and even theRepresentations of the Written Word17methodof reading, which ceased tobe participation in the mystery of theSacred Word, and became a regulated and hierarchized decoding of the let-ter (littera), the sense (sensus), and the doctrine (sententia) ,22 Thus theaccomplishment of silentreading cannotbe separated fromtheenormouschange that transformed the very function of writing.Another"revolutionin reading"concerns thestyle of reading. Inthesecond half of the eighteenthcentury, "intensive"reading was succeeded bywhathasbeendescribed as "extensive"reading.23 The"intensive" readerfaced a narrow and finite body of texts, which were read and reread, memo-rized and recited, heard and knownby heart, transmittedfromgenerationto generation.Religioustexts, and above all the Bible in Protestantcoun-tries, were the privileged sustenance of such reading, which was powerfullyimbuedwithsacredness andauthority. The"extensive"reader, thatof dieLesewut,therage forreadingthatovertookGermany inGoetiie'stime, isan altogetherdifferentreader onewhoconsumes numerousand diverseprint texts, reading themwith rapidity and avidity and exercising a criticalactivity over them that spares no domainfrommethodicaldoubt.This view is open todiscussion. There were, in fact,many"extensive"readersduringtheperiodof thesupposed"intensive" reading:considerthehumanistswhoaccumulatedreadingstocreatetheircommonplacebooks.24Theinversecaseis truerstill:itwasattheverymomentofthe"readingrevolution"thatdie most"intensive"readingsdeveloped(withRousseau, Goedie, and Richardson), readings in which the novel seized itsreaders tobecome a part of themand togovernthemas the religious texthadoncedone.25Moreover,forthemostnumerousandmosthumblereaders thoseofchapbooks,dieBibliothequebleue,orthelitemturadecordel reading long remained a rare anddifficultpractice. It was based onme memorizationand recitationof texts that became familiarbecause theywere so few, of texts that were, in fact, recognizedmore dian discovered.These necessary precautions,which moderatean overly stark opposi-tion between two styles of reading, do not,however, invalidate the proposi-tiondiat a "readingrevolution"tookplace in die secondhalf of theeigh-teendi century. Its formswere readily apparent in England,Germany, andFrance: the expansion of book production,the multiplicationand transfor-mationof newspapers, thesuccess of small formats, thefallof book prices(dianks to pirated editions), and the expansion of reading societies(bookclubs, Lesegeselkchaften,chambres de lecture) andlendinglibraries(circulat-inglibraries, Leihbibliotheken, cabinets de lecture) .Describedas a dangertothe political order,as a narcotic(Fichte's word), oras a disorderingofthe18Chapter iimaginationandthesenses, this"rageforreading"profoundly impressedcontemporary observers. There is no doubt that it played an essential role inthe critical distancing that alienated subjects from their monarch and Chris-tians from their church throughout Europe and especially in France.Therevolutionof theelectronic text will also be a revolution in read-ing. To read on a screen is notto read in a codex. The electronic representa-tionof texts completelychanges thetext'sstatus; for themateriality of thebook,itsubstitutestheimmateriality of textswithouta uniquelocation;against the relations of contiguity established in the print objects, it opposesthefreecompositionofinfinitelymanipulablefragments; inplace oftheimmediate apprehension of the whole work, made visible by the object thatembodiesit, it introducesa lengthy navigation in textual archipelagos thathaveneithershoresnorborders.26Suchchangesinevitably, imperativelyrequirenew ways of reading,new relationshipstothe writtenword,newintellectual techniques. While earlier revolutions in reading took place with-outchangingthe fundamentalstructure of die book,such willnotbe thecaseinourownworld.Therevolutionthathasbegunis,aboveall,arevolutionin the mediaand forms thattransmitthe writtenword.Inthissense, the present revolutionhas only one precedent in the West: the sub-stitution of the codex for the volumen of the book composedof quires forthe book in the form of a roll during the first centuries of the Christian era.Thisearliest revolution,which inventedthebookas we still knowit,raises threequestions.Firstis thatofitsdate.27Theavailablearchaeological evidence, fur-nishedby excavations inEgypt,permitsseveral conclusions.Ontheonehand,therollwasearliestandmosteffectivelyreplacedbythecodexinChristian communities: from the second century, all recovered manuscriptsof theBible take theform of a codex writtenonpapyrus, while 90 percentof thebiblical texts and70 percentof the liturgical and hagiographic textswe possess from the second through fourth centuries are also in the form ofthecodex.Ontheotherhand,therewasasignificantlagbeforeGreekliteraryandscientifictextsadoptedthenew form of thebook.Itwas notuntilthethirdandfourthcenturies thatthenumberof codices for Greektexts equaledthatof rolls. Even if thedatingof biblical texts onpapyrus isdebatable,sometimesmoveduptothethirdcentury,preference forthecodex remains powerfully associated with Christianity.The secondquestionconcerns the reasons for the adoption of this newformof book.Theclassic explanations remain pertinent, even if theymustbe nuanced. The use of both sides of the page undoubtedlyreduced thecostRepresentations of the Written Word19of producing a book, butit was notaccompanied by other possible econo-mies,suchas reductioninthesizeofscriptandnarrowingofmargins.Moreover, although the codex demonstrably permits the joiningof a largenumber of texts into a smaller volume, this advantage was not immediatelyexploited. Duringthe first centuries of its existence, the codex remained ofmodest size, composed of fewer than one hundred fifty sheets about threehundredpages.(It was notuntilthebeginningof thefourthoreven thefifth century that the codex expanded to incorporate the content of severalrolls.) Finally, the codex undeniably facilitates organizationand handling ofthetext.Itpermits pagination,thecreationof indexes andconcordances,andthecomparisonof onepassage withanother;betteryet,it permits areadertotraverse anentirebookbypagingthrough.FromthissetofadvantagesfollowedtheadaptationofthenewformofthebooktothetextualneedsofChristianity:inparticular,comparingtheGospelsandmobilizing citations of the Sacred Word for preaching, worship, and prayer.BeyondChristiancircles, however,mastery anduse of die possibilitiesofthecodex gained ground only slowly. Itappears tohave been adoptedbyreaders whowere notpart of theeducatedelite which remained hardilyfaithfultoGreek models,hence tothevolumen andinitially it was textsoutsidetheliterary canon(suchas scholarlytexts,technicalworks,andnovels)that were putin codex form.Amongtheconsequencesof dieshiftfromrolltocodex,twoin par-ticularmeritspecial attention.First, while thecodeximposeditsform, it:did not render obsolete former designations or representations of the book.In Augustine'sCityofGod, forexample, theterm codex designates thebookas physical object, but liber is used to mark divisions within the work. Thusis preserved the memory of theancient form "book" here becomes a unit:of discourse corresponding to die quantity of text held by a single roll(theCityofGod iscomposedoftwenty-twobooks).28Inthesameway,therepresentation of books on money and monuments,in painting and sculp-ture, remained firmly attached to the volumen, the symbol of knowledge andauthority even after the codex had imposed its new materiality and requireddie acquisition of new reading practices. Furthermore,to be read in otherwords, unrolled the roll hadtobe held withtwohands. Thus, as frescosand bas-reliefs illustrate,the impossibility of a reader's writing and readingat the same time, and thus, too,the importance of dictation. The reader wasliberated by thecodex. Resting ona table or lectern, die book in quires 11longerrequiredparticipationofsomuchofdiebody.Onemightthusdistance oneself, reading and writing at the same time, moving at one's own20Chapter ipace frompage topage, frombooktobook. Withthecodex as well camethe invention of a formal typology that associated formats and genres, typesof books and categories of discourse, so initiating a grid for identifying andcategorizingbooks that theprintingpress would inheritand that we stillpossess today.29Why this backward glance? Why, in particular, pay so muchattentiontothebirthof thecodex?Because understandingand mastering theelec-tronic revolutionof tomorrow(or today)very much dependson properlysituatingitwithinhistory overdietongue dune.Thispermits usfullytoappreciate the new possibilities created by thedigitalization of texts,theirelectronic transmission,and theirreceptionby computer.Inthe world ofelectronic texts, or, more appropriately, of theelectronic representation oftexts, two constraints that have been considered insurmountable until nowmaybe eliminated.Thefirstconstraintis thatwhichnarrowly limitsthereader'sinteractionwiththetext.Since thesixteenthcentury inotherwords, since printers tookcharge of the signs, marks, and chapter orrun-ningtitlesthatwereaddedmanuallytotheprintedpageby the reader-emendatororbook owner in thetime of incunabula thereader can onlyinsinuatehisorherownwritinginthevirginspacesofthebook.Theprintedobject imposes its form, structure,and layout withoutin any waypresupposing the reader's participation. A reader who nevertheless intendstoinscribe hisorherpresenceintheobjectcandosoonlyby surrep-titiously, clandestinely occupying the spaces in the book that have beenleftfree of printing: interiors of covers, blank pages, margins of the text.30Withtheelectronictext,matterswill neveragain bethesame.Thereader can notonly subject an electronic text to numerous processes(indexit,annotateit, copy it, disassemble it, recomposeit, move it), but,betteryet, become its coauthor. The distinction that is highly visible in the printedbook between writing and reading,between the author of die text and thereaderofthebook,willdisappearinthefaceofanaltogetherdifferentreality:onein whichthereader becomes an actorof multivocal composi-tion or, at the very least, is in a positionto create new texts fromfragmentsthathave been freelyspliced andreassembled. Like themanuscript readerwhocouldjoin extremely diverse works ina single book,unitingthematwillwithasinglebindingindiesamelibro-zibcddone,thereaderintheelectronicagecanconstructcollectionsoforiginaltextswhose existenceand organizationdepend on the reader alone. But, more important, one canintervene in thosetexts at any moment,modifying them, rewritingthem,making them one's own.We can see howsuch possibilitiescall into ques-Representations of the Written Word21tionandimperilthecategorieswe usetodescribeliterary works,whichhave been associated since the eighteenthcentury with an individual, singu-lar, and original creative act and on which are foundedthe very concept ofliterary property. The idea of copyright,understood as an author'sright ofpropertyoveranoriginalworkthatis theproductof hisorher creativegenius(thetermwas first usedini7oi),31isill-suitedtothemeans ofcompositionaffordedby electronic databases.32Ontheotherhand,theelectronictextmakes itpossible for the firsttimetoovercomea contradictionthathaslonghauntedtheWest.Thatcontradictionopposesthedreamofa universal library(which bringsto-getherall bookseverpublished;all textsever written;indeed,as Borgessuggested,all books that couldpossibly be written,exhausting every com-binationof lettersofthealphabet)againstthenecessarilydisappointingreality of collectionsthat,no matterhowlarge, can provideonly a partial,lacunary, and mutilated image of universal knowledge.33 The West has cre-atedan exemplary andmythicfigureof thisnostalgiafor lost exhaustive-ness: the library of Alexandria.34 The communicationof texts over distancesannuls the heretofore insoluble distinction between the place of the text andtheplace of thereader,andso makes thisancientdream possible, accessi-ble. The text in its electronic representationcan reach any readerendowedwiththenecessary means toreceive it.Ifall existing texts, manuscriptorprinted,were digitalized(in otherwords,convertedinto electronic text),thendieuniversalavailabilityofthewritteninheritancewouldbecomepossible. All readers, wherever they might be, with the sole conditionthat itbebeforea readingpostconnectedtoa networkforthedistributionofcomputerizeddocuments,could consult, read, study any text, regardless ofitsoriginallocation.35"Whenitwas proclaimedthelibrary containedallbooks,the first impression was oneof extravagant happiness":theextrav-aganthappinessofwhichBorgesspokeispromisedusbythelibrarieswithout walls, even without specific location,thatare undoubtedlyin ourfuture.36Extravaganthappiness butperhaps notwithoutrisk. Infact,eachform,each medium,each structureforthetransmissionandreceptionofthe written word profoundly affectsits possible uses and interpretations. Inrecentyears, historiansof thebookhave attemptedtodiscern,at variouslevels, theimplicationsof theseforms.37Examples aboundof theways inwhich transformations of material typography (in the broadest sense of theword)have profoundly changed the uses, circulation, and understanding ofthe "same" text:22Chapter iThevariations indivisionsof thebiblical text,inparticularthosederived fromthe editionsof RobertEstienne withtheirnumberedverses.Theimpositionofdevicespropertoprintedbooks(titleandti-tlepage, woodcuts,division intochapters) ontoworksthatwerewholly foreign toprintculturebecause theirinitial formwastiedtoauniquelymanuscriptcirculation.Suchwasthecase,forin-stance, of the LazarilkdeTormes, an apocryphal letter without tide,chapters,orillustrations, which wasintendedfora literate publicandwastransformed byits first publishers intoa booksimilar inpresentationtoalifeofthesaintsorrelationdesucesos inotherwords, into one of the most widely circulated genres of Golden AgeSpain.38Thetransformation,inEngland,oftheatricalworksfromEliza-bethaneditions,whichwererudimentaryandcompact,intoedi-tions that, in adoptingclassical French conventions at the beginningoftheeighteenthcentury, made divisionsbetween acts and scenesand restoredsome theatrical action to the printed text by includinginformationabout the stage directions.39The colportage editionsof already published, mosdy learned texts,requiringnewformsinordertoreach more"popular" readers inCastile, England, and France.Thesecases are parallel. Thesignificance,orbetter yet, the historically andsocially distinct significations,of a text, whatever they may be, are insepar-ablefromthematerial conditionsandphysical forms thatmake thetextavailable to readers.From these cases we may draw a powerfullesson for thepresent:thetransferof a written heritage fromone medium toanother,fromthe codexto the screen, wouldcreate immeasurable possibilities, but it wouldalso doviolence to the texts by separating them from the original physical forms inwhich they appeared and which helped to constitute their historical signifi-cance.Imaginethat,inamoreorlessdistantfuture,theworksofourtraditioncouldbe communicatedorunderstoodonly via electronic repre-sentation. There wouldbe an enormous risk of losing the intelligibility of atextualculturein which therewas a long-standingandcrucial associationbetweentheidea of thetextanda particular formof thebook:thecodes.Nothing betterdemonstratesthe powerof thisassociation than the tradi-tional Western metaphors that represent the book as a figure for destiny, dieRepresentations of the Written Word23cosmos, or the human body.40 From Dante to Shakespeare, fromRaymondLulltoGalileo,thebookusedmetaphorically was notanybook:it wascomposed of quires, constitutedby leaves and pages, protectedby binding.Themetaphorof theBookof theWorld,theBookof Nature,whichhasbeensopowerful intheearly modernera,issecuredbyimmediateanddeeplyrootedrepresentationsthatassociatethewrittenwordwiththecodex.Theuniverseofelectronictextsnecessarily signifiesadistancingfromthe mental representationsand intellectual operationsthat are specifi-cally tiedtothe form thatdie bookhas taken in theWest for seventeen oreighteencenturies.Intruth,no"orderof discourse"is separable fromthe"order of books" with which it is contemporaneous.Thus it seems to me imperative to elaborate two requirements. On theone hand, the profoundtransformation thatis currently altering all modesof communication and reception of the written word must be accompaniedby historical, juridical, and philosophicalreflection.A technicalrevolutioncannotbe simply ignoredorreacted to.Thecodex actually overcame andsupplanted the roll, even if the latter persisted throughout the Middle Agesin another form (the scroll) destined for other uses (in particular, archival).Printing replaced manuscript, overwhelmingly, as a means forreproducingand disseminating texts, even if copyingby handcontinuedto play its partin thecirculation of numerousgenres of texts thoseproducedaccordingtothearistocratic andliterary modeloftheGentlemanWriter,orthoseproducedby entrepreneurial shops, or those circulating in "scribal commu-nities"thatwere boundby secrets, friendship, orintellectual complicity.41One may supposethat in thetwenty-fifthcentury, in that 2440 thatLouis-Sebastien Mercierimaginedinhis Utopia, theLibrary of theKing(or ofFrance)will notbea "littleoffice"that: holdsonlytinyvolumesinduo-decimo that concentrate all useful knowledge,42 but will be a single point inanetworkstretchingacross theentireplanet,ensuringtheuniversal ac-cessibilityofa textualinheritanceavailableeverywhere thankstoitselec-tronic form. The moment has thus come better to designate and understandtheeffectsof sucha transformation. Consideringthattexts are notneces-sarily books(oreven periodicals or newspapers, which also derive fromthecodex),thetimehasalso cometoredefinethe juridical notions(literaryproperty,author'srights,copyright),administrativeregulationsandin-stitutions( depfolegal, nationallibrary), and library practices(cataloguing,classification,bibliographicaldescription)thathavebeenconceivedandunderstoodinrelationtoanotherform of production,conservation,andcommunicationof the written word.24Chapter iBut we face a second requirement,indissolubly linked to the first. Thelibrary of thefuture mustalso be a place that will preserve theknowledgeandunderstandingof writtenculturein theformsthatwere, andstill aretoday,very muchits own.Theelectronic representation of all textswhoseexistence did notbegin with computerizationshould notin any way implythe relegation, forgetting, or, worse yet, destructionof the objects in whichthey were originally embodied.More than ever, perhaps, one of the criticaltasks of the great libraries is to collect, to protect, to inventory(for example,in the form of collective national catalogues, the first step toward retrospec-tivenationalbibliographies),and, finally, tomake accessible thekinds ofbooks that have been those of men and women who have read since the firstcenturies of the Christian era, the kinds of books that are still our own.Onlyby preserving the understanding of our culture of the codex may we whole-heartedly realize the "extravagant happiness" promisedby the screen.2. Princely Patronage and theEconomy of DedicationIn The Tempest,which was performed at court on i November1611beforeJames I,Shakespeare presenteda prince who,tohis misfortune,preferredthecompanyofbookstotheartofgovernment.Prospero,thedukeofMilan, had given up the exercise of power in order to devote all his time tothestudy of the liberal arts and secret knowledge."Being transportedandraptinsecret studies,"his onlyaspiration hadbeento flee theworldandfind refugein his library: "Me,poorman,my library was dukedomlargeenough" (1.2.109-10).l Prospero had given over the business of governingthestate to his brotherAntonio.This primary disruptionof normalorderwas the source of all the troubles. It was reflectedon the political level whenAntoniobetrayed his trust,proclaimedhimself duke,andbanished Pros-perofromhis owndukedom,and onthecosmic level by thestormof theopening scene that turns the order of Nature upside down just as Antonio'susurpationof powerhaddestroyedpoliticalorder.Thestory toldin TheTempestis oneof reconciliation. Attheendof theplay, theharmonythathad been broken is fullyrestored, thus mending the initial rupture that hadmadeProsperoan all-powerful magician,themaster of theelementsanddie spirits, butalso a penniless sovereign stripped of his throne,banished,and living in exile on an uncharted isle.2The mirror the play offeredthe living prince reflected both thepowerofbooksandtheirdanger.Itis thanks tothebooksdiefaithfulGonzaloenabled Prospero to take with him in the ship that bore him away ("Know-ingIlovedmy books,hefurnish'dme/Frommineownlibrarywithvolumes that/I prize above my dukedom"; 1.2.166-68) that Prospero canloose thefuryof thewaves orcalm them,call upspirits, andcast spells toenchant human beings. But it was that same limitless passion for books inparticular, for books of hidden knowledge that made him lose his throne.The restoration of legitimate sovereignty and the reestablishment of politi-cal orderthusrequire thathe renounce thebooks that give poweronly atsuch a high price: "But this roughmagic /I here abjure.. . . I'llbreak my26Chapter 2staff,/Buryitcertain fathoms in theearth,/And deeperthandid everplummetsound/I'll drown my book"; 5.1.50-57).3Prospero's library is personal and "secret": it was the library of a prince,butthatdoesnotmakeitaprincelylibrary inthesenseofacollectionbroughttogetherfora sovereign butnotnecessarily forhis personal use.We need to make this distinction clear fromthe outset:the "king'slibrary"should notbe too hastily equated with the king's books, and even less withwhat the king read. This distinction can be illustrated in exemplary fashioninFrance:afterthe15705theking's"library" lalibmirieduroi wasremovedfromtheChateaudeFontainebleauandtransportedtoParis,where it was housedin buildings that were notroyal residences at first ina private house, in 1594 in the College de Clermont, in 1603 in the Couventdes Cordeliers, in1622 in a building on the rue de la Harpe butstill withinthe walls of the Cordeliers' friar}',and in1666 in two houses Colbert and hisbrotherhadboughtontherueVivienrie.Theroyal collection remainedthere until1721, when it was installed in the Hotel de Nevers. From the lastthird of the sixteenth century on, the "Bibliotheque du Roy" (the term firstappeared inan edictof1618)didnotoccupy a building that was also theruler's residence. The king's own books the ones that he himself read andthat formed the Cabinet du Louvre were not mingled with the books thatmade up the more "public" collection of die royal library. One proof of thisseparation is a rule established in1658 requiring bookseller-printers toaddafifthcopyofall bookspublished tothosetheyalreadydepositedwithgovernmentalauthorities. Two of these copies wentintotheBibliothequedu Roi, one went to the Communaute des Libraires-Imprimeurs(the booktrade's professional guild), one went to the Chancellor, and the fifth wentto the library at the Louvre "ordinarily called theCabinet des Livres[books ]thatserve ourperson."4OutsidetheLouvre,whentheking wenttohisvariousotherpalaces and houseshe hadin themorcarried withhimthebooks he most enjoyed.ThishadbeenthestandardprocedureforFrenchkingsevenbeforetheroyal library was movedfromFontainebleautoParis.Inan inventorydrawn upin1518 of thebooks in the king's library in the Chateau de Bloisthere is a heading "Other books that the King commonly carries" that listsseventeenworkstobeputintothecheststhatfollowedthekingas hemovedfromplace to place.5 It was not for personal reasons thatFrancois Icreateda newroyallibraryatFontainebleauaround1520;then,in1537,made itobligatory todepositofa copy of all die "worksworthy of beingseen" in the library at Blois; and, finally, broughtdie two libraries togetherPrincely Patronage and the Economyof Dedication27at Fontainebleauin1544. Thesecollectionshad a totally "public" purpose:they were intended as places fortheconservationof booksandas a meansforprotectingall meritoriousbooksfromfalling into oblivion.They wereopen to scholars and men of learning: as RobertEstienne wrote concerningthe library at Fontainebleau,"Ourking... offersitfreelytowhoever hasneedof it."6 Moreover,publicuse was oneof theargumentsadvanced fortransferring the libmirie tothe capital. In1567, Pierre de la Ramee(PetrusRamus)remindedCatherinede Medicis thather nobleancestorsCosimoand Lorenzo de' Medici had placed their library "at the heart of their states,in the city where it was the most accessible to men of learning."7 The king ofFrance owed it to himself to imitate their example.The "royal library" was thus a dual reality. On the one hand, in its mostsolidly instituted form it was intendednotfor the pleasure of die monarchbutfortheuseofthepublic.Thiswas howitbestservedhisgloryandcontributedtohis renown.G.abriel Naudestressedthe point in the Advispour dresser une bibliotheque that he had published in1627:[Is there]any more honest and any surer way to acquire great renownamongthepeoplesthanbysettinguphandsomeandmagnificentLibraries,thendedicating and consecrating them totheuse of thepublic? Itis also truethat:such an enterprise has never deceived or disappointed those whohave carrieditoutwell,andthatithasalwaysbeenjudgedbysuchconsequences,that:notonly private individuals have doneso successfully,totheiradvantage.. .[and]thateven the most ambitioushave always desired tomake use of ittocrownandperfect all theirnobleactions,as withthekeystone thatcapsthevault andserves as a luster and ornament toall the rest of thebuilding. AndIneed no otherproofs or witnesses to what I say than the great kings of EgyptandPergamum,Xerxes, Augustus,Lucullus,Charlemagne,MatthiasCorvi-nus, and the great King Francois I, who all (among the nearly infinite numberofthemany MonarchsandPotentateswhoalsomadeuseofthisruseandstratagem)enjoyed amassing a large number of Books, soughtways todo so,and hadvery curious and well-furnishedLibraries created.8Likeall thegreathumanistlibraries forexample, JohnDee's library9orthelibraries ofsuchFrenchhommes de robe(officials,judges)as HenrideMesmes, to whomNaudeaddressed his Advis, or Jacques de Thou,10bothof whomwere presidents of die Parlement the library of the king was nota solitarium, thatis, a place of retirement fromsociety ora refuge for secretpleasures.Opentomenofletters,toscholars,andeventothemerelycurious(as was theBibliothequeduRoiafter1692),thesecollectionsofmanuscripts and printed works could be mobilized to serve knowledge,therights of die monarch,or state politics and propaganda.28Chapter2But kings were also readers. Thatmeantthat,aside fromthe "public"library, they had collectionsof books scattered here and there amongtheirvariousresidences.FernandoBouza Alvarez hasemphasizedthecontrastbetweenPhilip IVs quitepersonallibrary in theTorre Alta of his AlcazarPalace in Madrid and the royal library at the Escorial:Thelibrary of the Torre Alta is without doubt an example of a highly person-alized library attentive to the particular and unique characteristics, needs, anddesiresofits proprietor.FortheSpanish Habsburgs,thegreatroyal librarycontinuedtobe the Laurentina, and die[library of the]Alcazar fulfilleda lessrepresentative,moreutilitarianandpleasure-oriented function. As Juan Al-onsoCalderonwrotein1615,thelatterwasfoundedbyPhilipIVatthebeginning of his reignprecisely "in ordertobe in it every day," "theking notbeing content with the illustrious Royal[library] of San Lorenzo."11We can see thesame duality in France in thecontrastbetweenthe Biblio-thequeduRoi(whichLouisXIVvisitedonlyonce,in1681)andtheCabinetduLouvre,latersupplantedbythelibrariesoftheChateaudeVersailles(created between1726 and1729 in the Petits Appartements)andthe Chateau de Choisy(created in 1742) ,12The royal collections whatever their nature werefoundedby draw-ing upon a number of sources. In France these included books confiscated asa resultof victoriousmilitary expeditions(for instance,during theItalianWars),privatelibraries ofthevariousmembersoftheroyalfamily(forexample,thelibraryofCatherinedeMediciswasincludedintheroyalcollection in 1599, that of Gaston d'Orleans in 1660), new books depositedbybooksellersandprinters(arequirementoftennotrespected),booksaddedby exchanges(suchas anexchange in1668 withthelibraryoftheCollegedes QuatreNations,to which Mazarin had bequeathedhis libraryand which was reconstitutedafterthe Fronde), and donations(that of theDupuy brothers, Jacques and Pierre, in 1652 was the first sizable addition ofprintedbookstotheroyallibrary, whichuntilthatpointhadconsistedlargely of manuscripts. Finally, the royal collectionalso acquired both singleworks boughtoutsideFrance by travelers, diplomats,andcorrespondentsandentirelibraries thathadbeenputupforsaleatthedeathsoftheirowners.Itis anotherand statistically much less significant source of books forPrincely Patronage and the Economyof Dedication29the royal library that interests us here: the book presented to the ruler. TheFrenchlanguageusesthesame terms dedieranddedicace todesignatethe consecration of a church and theofferingof a book. Furetiere's Diction-naire universel(1690)gives these definitions: ''''Dedicace:Consecrationof aChurch.. . .IsalsothepreliminaryEpistleofaBookaddressedtothepersontowhomonededicatesitinordertobeg[thatone]togiveitprotection";"Dedier:ConsecrateaChurch.... AlsosignifiesofferingaBook tosomeonetodo him honorand have occasion tospeak his praises,and often in the vain expectation of some reward." The ironic,almost bittertone of Furetiere'sesperervainement thatsatirizes penny-pinchingpatronsandwritersinsearch ofa handoutmustnotbeallowedtoobscuretheimportance of a practice that long governed the production and the circula-tion of written works.In the book itself, the dedication to the prince was an image first. Manyfrontispieces from the age of the manuscript book show the "author," on hiskneesbeforea princeseatedonhis throne displayingtheattributesof hissovereignty, offeringa richly bound book containing the work he has writ-ten,translated,commentedupon,or commissioned. Thescene brought anewcontenttoa traditionaliconographyfrequentlypresentedin minia-tures, frescoes,sculptedcapitals, stained-glass windows,and altar pieces inwhichakneelingdonoroffersamodelrepresentingthechurchorthechapelthathehas hadbuiltforthegreatergloryofGod.Inthepictureillustrating the relationship between the sovereign and the writer, the booktakes the place of the sacred building, the author replaces the donor, and theking replaces God, whose lieutenant on earth he is.13Cynthia J. Brownhas recently suggestedthat withthecomingoftheprinted bookthe representationof a dependentauthor,submissive totheprince who has deigned to receive his work, gave way to a vigorousaffirma-tion of the writer's own identity:It seems reasonable toconclude... thattheadvent of printand its develop-mentin the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries played nosmall part intherise ofauthorialself-consciousness among vernacular writers inParis.Itmay ultimately have effecteda change in the concept of literature itself.14Theexample onwhich Brownbases herdiesisis drawnfroma workof aParis"rhetoriqueur," AndredeLaVigne'sLaRessourcedeChrestiente,anallegorictextwrittentojustifyCharles VIII'sclaimstothekingdomofNaples. In the presentationmanuscript tothe king(BN MS fr. 1687), theauthorisbothconcealed(hisnameappears onlyinthefinallineofthe30Chapter2dedicatory verse, and then hiddenby a pun)and dependent(the miniatureon the frontispiece shows him in the classic posture of the donor kneeling atthe feet of the prince).Theprintededitionsof thesame work, whichappeared in an anthol-ogy titled Le Vergier d'honneur, present a quite differentimage of theauthor.For one thing, his name figureson the title page and is repeated on the lastline of the verse work, where it is given as a personal signature;foranother,thededicationsceneinthefrontispiecehasbeenreplacedbyaportraitoftheauthor.Thewoodcutis notanindividualized,realistic portraitofthewriterbutratherastereotypical "author"showncontemplatinghiscompletedwork.Itisanimagethatstandsonitsown,independentofany particular work orany specificauthor,todesignate a generic"author-function,"as Foucaultcalledit.15Amorerealistic miniatureina vellumcopy of the secondeditionof the work illustrates theact of composingthework. The poet is seated in a chair similar to the one the king occupies in theusualdedicationscenes,andbeforehimappeartheallegorical characterswhoare theprotagonistsoftheworkheis intheprocessof writing inboth senses thatthe wordecrire had in fifteenth-century French: physicallyholdingthepen and composinga work. For Cynthia Brown, in themovefrom the manuscript to the printed book "La Vigne's status as author devel-ops withinthesame text froma conventionally medieval secondary stanceinto a growingauthoritative presence, and. . . at the same time his patronCharles VIII changes froma dominant,personalizedauthoritytoa moreabsent, ambiguous persona."16Canwegeneralize onthebasisofthisexample? Perhaps not,if werememberthepersistenceofsuchdedicationscenesinsixteenth-centuryprintedbooks. AccordingtoRuthMortimer'ssampleof portraitsof au-thorsin thesixteenthcentury,such scenes fallintothreetypes.17 The firstdoes not,strictly speaking, constitutea presentation of a book,although itdoes place the author and the king to whom the work is dedicatedwithin acommonspace.Thisis whatoccursina woodcutillustrating the Annalesd'Aquitaineofjcun'Rouchct ( Poitiers, 1524) , where the king ( designated ina phylactery as "Franc. Rex")and theauthor("Actor")are surroundedbymythological figures ("Mercurus"), allegorical figures ("Fortitude," "Justi-tia,""Fides""Prudentia,""Temperentia"),andhistoricalfigures("Aqui-tania") ,18 Thesecond sort of iconography is in a more traditional vein andshows the act of presentation as the work passes fromthe author'shandtothatof the dedicatee(king, queen,minister, courtier). A thirdcategory ofillustrationshowstheauthorreadinghis workaloudtothesovereigntoPrincely Patronage and die Economy of Dedication31whom he is offeringit. This occurs, for example, in a woodcut that AntoineMacault used for two translations(one of Diodorus Siculus and theotherof Cicero'sPhilippics') that he dedicated to Francois I.19 The relationship ofpatronage andprotectionshownin dedicationscenes thusdidnotdisap-pearwiththefirstaffirmationoftheauthor'sidentityandtheauthorialfunctionan affirmationthat predated the inventionof print.Such scenesshould be seen in connectionwith the various other ways of portraying theauthor picturedalone,picturedsurroundedbythereal orsymbolicat-tributes of his art, presented as a hero of classical antiquity, or depictedas helookedin real life. The portrait fromlife that authenticates die work was thechoice of thesurgeon Ambroise Pare, who,followingtheexample of Ve-salius,hadhimselfdepictedatvariousstagesinhislifeinmostoftheeditionsof his works diat appeared after1561(diat is tosay, in nine of thesixteeneditionsof his works publishedduringhis career as anauthorbe-tween1545 and1585) .20The contracts drawn up between authors or translators and bookseller-printersare, indieirway, anotherindicationof die persistence of dedica-tions to protectors.In the thirty or so contracts writtenin Paris diat AnnieParent-Charon has studiedfortheperiod1535-60, die mostfrequent ar-rangement is that the bookseller took responsibility for all expenses and dieauthor received remuneration in the form of a certain number of free copiesof this book rather than in cash, die number of copies varying from twenty-five forthetranslation of Livy's Decades( Historyof Rome) by Jean de Ame-lin, published by Guillaume Cavellat(contract dated 6 August1558) to onehundredfor L'Epithomede la wayeastrologie et de lareproveeof David Fina-rensis,printedbyEtienneGroulleau(contractdated22 August1547).Monetaryremunerationinadditiontothefreecopiesgivenby thebook-seller appears only in two situations: when the authorhimself hadobtained\hzprivile0eto print the work and had paid die chancery fees,and when thecontractwasforatranslation,particularly oneoftheCastilianchivalricromances that were in fashion during the15508 and15605.21Even in thesecases, however,freecopies of the work tobe offeredtothe king and other importantpersonages continuedto be the most impor-tant item in the contract. We can see this in a clause in the contract drawn upon19 November1540 betweenNicolas de Herberayand Jean Longis andVincentSertenas, Paris booksellers,covering Herberay'stranslationof the32Chapter 2second,third,andfourth booksofAmadisdeGaule. Forhis workandforthe privilegethathe hadobtained,Nicolasde Herberayreceived"eighty-fourecus d'orsoleil" and"twelveunbound[ enblanc en volumedefeutile]copies of each of theaforesaid volumes, as soon as they are printed, withouthis paying anything." There was more,however: the booksellerspromisednot to put the book on sale before the translator had time to have a copy ofthe workthat he intendedtodedicate to the king bound properly and toarrange for the presentation:"They cannot distribute or sell any of the saidthree volumes before they have been presentedby the said Herberay totheKing ourLord,onpainof all expenses, damages, and interests,thewhich[presentationcopies]hepromises toofferwithinsix weeks afterthesaidvolume is delivered to him, printedand unbound,as specified."22 Two yearslater the contract for the translation of the fifth and sixth volumes ofAmadisde Gaule, signed 2 March1542 by Nicolas de Herberay and the booksellersJean Longis, Denis Janot, and Vincent Sertenas, stipulated not only that thebooksellers were to pay a sum of 62 ecus d'orsoleil, but also that they woulddelivertothetranslator"twelvebooksof thesaid fifth andsixth books that is, ten unboundand two bound and gilded without his having to payanything for the said books."23Thescenedepictedintheminiaturesandthewoodcutsreferredtoalastingreality.Thekingreceivedforhislibrary orlibrariesanumberofworksdedicatedtohimbyauthorswhosoughthis protection.Theseauthorsusually hadthebooksboundbeforetheypresentedthemtothesovereign a customthattosomeextent destroyedtheuniformity Fran-cois I attemptedto impose on the volumes in the library at Fontainebleau,all of which were to be bound in the same way with identical decorationondark brown or black calf bindings, with the royal seal placed at the center ofthe covers.24Readingaloudthe work presentedto the king is also an attested prac-tice. La Croix du Maine gives us one example. In1584 he dedicatedtotheking(in thiscase, Henri III)the Premier volume de In Eibliotheque du Sieurde LaCroix du Maine. Quiest un catalogue general de toutes sortesd'Autheurs,quiontescritenFmnfoisdepuiscinqcentsanset plus, jusquesace jourd'huy(Paris:AbelL'Angelier).Several ofthecharacteristics ofthisbookmarkthe dependentrelationship La Croix du Maine intendedto set upbetweenthe king and himself. The sovereign's portrait(not the author's)appears inthe frontispiece engraving; the dedicatory epistle addressed to the king endswith the words "Fra^ois de la Crois du Maine duquelFanagramme est telRaceduMans,si fideP asonroi"(FrancoisdelaCroixduMaine,thePrincely Patronage and the Economy of Dedication3 3anagram of which is "Raceof Le Mans, so loyal toits king"). Theauthoreven describes what mightbe yet anotherdedicationscene: "If your Maj-esty shoulddesire to know whatare the other[works]thatI have writtenandcomposedfortheornamentandillustrationofyoursofamousandflourishing Kingdom,Iam ready toread(whenitmay please youtosocommandme)the Discourse that I had printed five years ago touchingonthegeneral catalogue of my works." The "discourse" towhich he referredwastheDiscours duSieur de LaCroixdu Mainecontenant sommairementlesNoms,Tiltreset Inscriptionsdela plus gmnae partiede ses Oeuvreslatinesetfranfaises^ a work listing several hundred books that was published in LaCroix du Maine's Premier volume de la Bibliotheque.2S Reading aloud to thekingfroma workdedicatedtohimanddestinedtotake itsplace inhislibrary was anact attesting,even intheage of print,tothepersistence oftheolder meaning of "publication"as a "public" readingof a workbeforedie prince, lord, or institutionto which it was dedicated.26The author's dedication of his book to the sovereign was still one of thebestways towinroyal goodwillintheeighteenthcentury. Oneexampletakes us tothecourtof Louis XV In1763 Marmontelwas lobbyingtobeelectedtotheplace leftvacant in die Academic Francaiseby thedeathofMarivaux. Hewas the candidate of the Philosophes, butthere were at thetime only fourof themamongtheacademicians. Worse, oneof theking'sministers,thecomtede Praslin, was firmly opposedtoMarmontel'scan-didacy. The only way to get around an oppositionthat powerful was to winthe king's backing. In ordertodo so, Marmontel,the Philosophes' candi-date, following theadvice of his protectress, themarquise dePompadour,went back to the mosttime-honored,traditional gesture of submission onthe part of a man of letters and offeredthe sovereign a richly bound copy ofoneof his works. As hestated,"theprintingofmy Poetique finally beingcompleted,IbeggedMadame de Pompadourtoget the king topermit awork tiiat ourliterature lacked tobe presentedtohim.Itis, Itoldher, afavorthat will cost nothingeitherto the king or to the State and that willdemonstratethatIam well regardedand well received by dieking." Themarquise obtained the king's assent withoutdifficulty,and she suggested toMarmontel that he offerhis book on the same day to the sovereign, totheroyal family,and tothe ministers, which was precisely what he determinedto do. Heset off for Versailles:My copies being very magnificentlybound(for I spared noexpense), I wentoneSaturday evening to Versailles with my packets.... The following day, I34Chapter 2was introduced by the due de Duras. The king was at his lever. Never had I seenhimso handsome. Hereceived my homage withan enchanting look. My joywouldhave known noboundsif he hadsaid three words tome,buthis eyesspoke for him.Furthermore, Marmontelcontinued:When I went downto the apartments of Madame de Pompadour, to whom Ihad already presented my book, she said, "Go to M. de Choiseul and give himhis copy; he will receive you well. Andleave me the copy for M.de Praslin; Iwill give it to him myself."Thededicationof thePoetiquehaddoneits job,as in theendMarmontelwas elected tothe Academic.27 Thisbrief story exemplifiesthe paradoxicallink, intheeighteenthcentury, between thenewdefinitionof theman oflettersasafearlesspractitionerofthephilosophicspiritandtherespectforthemosttraditionalformsofpatronagethatwasstillnecessaryforanyone who hoped toenjoy the favor of the ruler and supreme dispenser ofprotections.28Authorsandtranslatorswerenottheonlypersonswhopresentedbookstoprinces. Thebooksellersoften didso as well,which meantthatthereweretimeswhenadedicationputtheauthorofthetextandtheproducerof thebookincompetitionwitheach other.Antoine Verard, amanwhodominatedthebook-sellingsceneinParisbetween1485and1512,isacase inpoint.As MaryBethWinnhasshown,Verard'sprintpublicationspresented a certain numberof commontraits they inheriteddirectlyfromthemanuscripts thathe also produced.Foronething,theyincludedadedicatoryletter,poem,orforewordthatinsomeinstancesfigured only in thecopy offeredtotheIcing; foranother, the presentationcopiesgenerally containeda miniature representing thededication scene.The important point is that Verard, who was neither the author of the textsnortheactual printerof thebooksbutsimply theirpublisher,oftencasthimself in the role and took on the posture of the donor. His own portraitfiguresinseveraloftheminiaturesthatshowthegiftofthebooktotheking; in one manuscript his portrait is even captionedActeur.Furthermore,Verard signed a large number of dedications to the king(using the formula"tres humble et tres obeisant serviteur"). Althoughin thirteen of the workshe published the dedicationtoCharles VIII is signed by the authororthePrincely Patronage and the Economyof Dedication3 5translator of the work, in eleven others(or almost as many) it is Verard whoaddresses the sovereign. Antoine Verard sometimes wrotean original textforhisdedications,buthealsoborrowedpreliminary matterwrittenbysomeoneelse and forsomeoneelse. Thusin UArbredes bataittes(1493),Verardpresentedas hisowna dedication writtenbytheauthor;what ismore, the text addressed to Charles VIII had been writtenfor Charles VI.Inlike fashion, he used thesame dedication in two presentation copies ofBoethius, De consolatiom that he published in 1494. The first was addressedto Charles VIII; the second to Henry VII of England, whose name, writteninink,replaced thename oftheking of France, which hadbeen scrapedaway.29 Thebookseller-publishers, considering themselves tobe the"au-thors"ofthebookswhosetexttheyhadinfactnotwritten,presentedcopiesoftheirpublicationstotheprinceandtohislibraryasa way ofwinning his protection.Norwas the practice exclusive totheearly days ofprinting: in the seventeenth century, the bookseller Toussaint Du Bray put adedicatoryletterofhisowncompositionintoeightofhispublications.Threeof them were addressed toa sovereign, twotoLouis XIIof Franceand one to Charles I of England.30The dedication and presentation of the book took on a special meaningwhere scientific works were involved. Galileo provides an excellent exampleof this.31 In1610 Galileo was professor of mathematics at the University ofPadua, an institutiongoverned by the Venetian Republic, but his hope wasto enter into the patronage system of an absolute ruler, which was the onlyway toobtain remunerationwithout havingtospenda large part of one'stime teaching. Thededicationwas an essential weaponin theconquestofsucha position.In1610Galileo published(Venice: Tomasso Baglioni) awork entitled Sidereus nuncius in which he described the observations madepossible by thcferspicillum (spyglass) he had devised. The book opens witha dedication toGrand DukeCosimoIIde' Medici, whose protectionandsupport Galileo sought. Galileo offersthe grand duke not only his book butalso a spyglass to enable the prince to observe the face of the moon, the fixedstars, theMilky Way, nebulousstars, and,in particular, four "planets"(or"stars")that had never been seen before. Even morethanthebook,whatGalileo was dedicatingtotheMedicis was those"stars" thatis, thefourbodies that revolvedaroundJupiter, as the long subtitle indicated: "quos,nemini in hanc usquediem cognitos,novissime Authordepraehendit pri-36Chapter 2mus;atqueMediceaSidera nuncupandosdecrevit"(which, unknownbyanyone until this day, the first author detected recently and decided to nameMedicean stars) ,32Byexploitingthedynasticandastrologicmythologyof theMedicisthatclosely associated CosimoI withJupiter,Galileo was infactofferingthe grand duke what was his, thatis tosay, "stars" predestined tobear hisname. The preface to the work put the notion forcefully:"TheMaker of theStars himself, by clear arguments, admonishedme tocall these new planetsby the illustrious name of Your Highnessbeforeall others." CosimoII wasbornwhenJupiteroccupiedthe"midheaven,"andhehadinheritedthevirtuestransmittedtothefounderof dieMedicidynasty by"thestar ofJupiter, themostnobleof themall."33 Thisgiftandhisskillfuldedicationbrought Galileo what he pined for: five months after the presentation of thebookhewas namedbyCosimoII"Filosofoe MatematicoPrimario delGranduca di Toscana," a post that bore remuneration as professor of mathe-maticsat theUniversity of Paviabuti