Book-printing practices as an object of literary history

The history of reading, which began in the 1980s, proposes a revision of the methodological bases for the study of the text, taking into account the functions of its material support. This approach encourages literature historians to redefine their purpose and fundamental categories of analysis, such as the notions of “author” and “literary work”. The opposition of the so-called “platonic” conception (exempt from the material form) and the “pragmatic” one (supported by the peculiarities of this form) of the text highlights the gap between the approaches of the two disciplines. The “pragmatic” analysis is relevant for the period of manuscript literature and the beginnings of the printed book; it reveals the role of booksellers, printers and proofreaders in the creation of the text, as well as the formal elements of the book that guide the reception of the work by various communities of readers. However, it is not always appropriate for the notion of “modern literature”, which is constituted as a specific social and cultural institution. The need for the new paradigm of historical-literary studies is indisputable; nevertheless, the refusal to accept the notion of the work transcending its material achievements pushes literary history to merge with Cultural Studies and, with it, to question its historical character. The “ideal” and invariable work, free from all its handwritten and printed avatars, is an inherent element of the literary institution, one of the main prerequisites of the author’s consciousness and of the notion of “authorship”. By imposing the “pragmatic” approach at the expense of “Platonism”, the theory and history of reading calls into question the historical singularity of the literary model constituted from the 15th -16th centuries, under the influence of Gutenberg’s invention.