What is a book?

The first two lectures given as part of this Chair, inaugurated in 2007, were devoted to the study of an exemplary case of textual mobility between languages, genres and historical situations, namely, the theatrical appropriations of Don Quixote in ^17th- and ^18th-century Europe. This research, which began with Shakespeare's, and perhaps especially Fletcher's, play The History of Cardenio, performed in 1613 but of which neither printed edition nor manuscript survives, and continued with the analysis of other Don Quixote or Cardenio, performed on Spanish, French or English stages, has drawn attention to the fundamental tension that exists between, on the one hand, the malleability of the works, transformed by their translations, their migrations from one genre to another, the successive meanings attributed to them by their audiences, and, on the other hand, their perpetuated identity, always recognizable in their multiple adaptations. This fundamental paradox, which combines the permanence of the work with the plurality of its texts, or states, is the starting point for this year's lecture. It builds on the research program defined in the opening lecture of October 2007, Écouter les morts avec les yeux (Listening to the dead with your eyes), and founded on the idea that the history of written culture, grasped over the very long term, can help us to better understand the mutations of the present, characterized by the entry of the written word into the digital world. The debates sparked by the creation of digital collections, questions about the transformation of reading and writing practices, the proliferation of new screens and the growth of the e-book market are all indicators of the profound transformations of written culture, whose issues (legal, aesthetic, cultural) are often masked by the incessant flow of new releases or the bitterness of controversy. A historical perspective, free of any prophetic temptations, can help us to understand them better.