Found in translation
Literary scholar Roger Chartier took on the question of “When and Why Do Literary Manuscripts Matter?” at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on Oct. 18, exploring the creation of literary archives and the appearance in the 1750s of authorial manuscripts. A French historian and historiographer, Chartier, whose talk was co-sponsored by Radcliffe and Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center, is directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, professor in the Collège de France, and Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. His work examines the history of books, publishing, and reading, with a recent focus on the intersection of written culture and literature. In opening remarks, Harvard’s Ann Blair, the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, who helped organize the event, called Chartier “deeply historical in his thinking, always sensitive to the gap between then and now.” Chartier explored the history of the autograph manuscript, the...