Book Practices & Textual Itineraries - 4 / 2014

Ouvrage bilingue (français et anglais).

Working outward from the path traced by Hubert Nyssen in Du texte au livre, les avatars du sens, the essays collected in this volume examine the process by which texts are embodied in forms that give them the appearance of completion and fi nality. The passage from fl uid, provisional textual states to the apparent solidity of the published book is explored in the light of recent developments in textual scholarship. By engaging with archival records, with questions specifi c to periodical and serial publications and authorpublisher interactions, the contributors to this volume call into question certain widely held assumptions about the processes through which texts become books. They present the relation between text and book as ultimately less straightforward than the one proposed by Nyssen. Instead, they seek to transcend the linear progress from text to book, establishing more dynamic connections between the multiple material states in which a given work or document has exited over the course of its history.