J

James (Karen)

University of Virginia Library

Books without borders : French Renaissance books in the digital world

Livres sans frontières : livres français de la Renaissance dans le monde numérique.

Abstract

The advent of the printing press brought with it a new infrastructure for the dissemination of and access to information, vastly expanding the frontiers of knowledge and the borders of book ownership and readership at the dawn of the Renaissance. The invention and spread of digital and Internet technology are having a similarly transformative effect on transmission of the printed word. Electronic publishers, online booksellers, university faculty, and library directors are currently working with digital/Internet technology and exploring its power to expand, transform, even transcend, longstanding borders, particularly those determined by geographical space. With the generous support of the Florence Gould Foundation, the University of Virginia Library has launched an ambitious project to digitize rare French printed books from the sixteenth century, an undertaking that crosses borders on numerous levels.

The Douglas H. Gordon Collection at the University of Virginia comprises some 1200 French books dating from the sixteenth through the early twentieth century. Over 600 were printed before 1600, and many retain their original bindings. Among the volumes dating from the sixteenth-century are literary works, emblem books, devotional texts, pamphlets from the French wars of religion, travel narratives, and works of philosophy, medicine, astronomy and architecture. Together, they provide a remarkable window on the French Renaissance. The rarity of the books, combined with the size and range of the collection, make it a treasure for Renaissance scholars from around the world, as well as those studying the early history of printing and the book arts. In fact, many of the volumes are counted among only a few surviving copies, and, in some cases, the Gordon book is the only known copy in the world. Among the rarest sixteenth-century titles in the collection, for example, are an illustrated edition of Marot’s Blasons anatomiques du corps feminin…, published by Charles Langelier in Paris in 1543, and a little-known volume of Alciati’s emblems, Les emblemes de M. Andre Alciat,/ traduits en ryme Francoise par Iean le Feure, published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes in 1549, with woodcuts attributed to Bernard Salomon.

Printed and first sold in France, these books eventually crossed the Atlantic, purchased by twentieth-century collector and francophile, Douglas Huntly Gordon. Bequeathed to the University of Virginia upon Mr. Gordon’s death, this fabulous collection creates conflicting demands for the library, whose stewardship of the remarkable books includes the responsibility to preserve as well as to provide access to this heritage. Internet and digital technology have become a powerful tool for addressing those potentially contradictory aims. Digital library projects such as the current one aim to erase many of the physical borders that limit access to the books.

Thanks to a gift from the Florence Gould Foundation, The University of Virginia Library, in collaboration with the University of Virginia French Department, has begun making these treasures from the French Renaissance accessible to the public via the Internet. The online collection includes digital facsimiles of selected titles, combined with a network of resources designed to situate the books within the rich context of the French Renaissance. The project's goal is twofold: to expand the role of rare books in the University of Virginia's mission of research and instruction and to preserve the texts through digital transformation. Digitization began in 2003, and the first phase of the project will be available online early in 2004. In two years, the grant will digitize approximately one hundred books in the categories of Literary Works, Emblem Books, Books for Women, the Renaissance World, the French Wars of Religion, and the French Language.

This conference paper and visual presentation will outline the project’s design and goals, and consider how digital projects (this and others like it in a variety of disciplines) allow faculty, students and librarians to cross or eliminate borders in collaborative, productive ways. Examples from the project will also show to what extent the concept of crossing borders is an integral part of the content of the collection. Many of the 16th-century books in the Gordon Collection focus on the intellectual or the physical crossing of borders. In addition to travel narratives with accounts of journeys to the Middle East and the New World, numerous volumes present translations of text from Greek, Latin and Italian, with self-conscious reflexions on the nature of translation itself and the crossing of linguistic borders.

Finally, many of the books being digitized were printed in Renaissance Lyon. It seems fitting at this conference to bring some of those volumes “home,” at least virtually, in order to look closely at how, in the context of our project, they both present and represent important border crossings, and to consider what they can tell us about the process of creating and reading books without borders.

Résumé

Comme l’avènement de l’imprimerie au quinzième siècle, la technologie de l’Internet et la “presse” numérique d’aujourd’hui sont en train d’élargir et de transformer les concepts du livre et de la bibliothèque. Bien des libraires, presses, professeurs d’université et bibliothécaires se servent de cette technologie (relativement nouvelle) dans leur travail, et explorent sa capacité de traverser, et même de transformer, les vieilles frontières de la lecture et du livre, surtout celles qu’impose l’espace géographique. Avec un don généreux de la Fondation Florence Gould, la Bibliothèque de l’Université de Virginie a lancé un projet ambitieux de numérisation de livres français imprimés au seizième siècle, projet qui traverse des frontières à plusieurs niveaux.

La Collection Douglas H. Gordon à l’Université de Virginie comprend environ 1200 livres français, qui datent du seizième au vingtième siècle. Parmi les 600 tomes du seizième siècle se trouvent des oeuvres littéraires, des livres d’emblèmes, des livres de dévotion, des pamphlets des guerres de religion en France, des récits de voyage, et des oeuvres de philosophie, médicine, astronomie et architecture. Ensemble, ils représentent une fenêtre remarquable sur la Renaissance française. Le nombre et la rareté des livres font de cette collection un trésor pour ceux qui étudient la Renaissance et l’histoire du livre à cette époque. Parmi les titres les plus rares dans la collection, par exemple, sont une édition illustrée des Blasons anatomiques du corps feminin… (Paris: Charles Langelier, 1543) et une édition française des emblèmes d’Alciat, Les emblemes de M.Andre Alciat,/traduits en ryme Francoise par Iean le Feure (Lyon: Jean de Tournes, 1549), avec des gravures sur bois attribuées à Bernard Salomon.

Imprimés et d’abord vendus en France, ces livres ont éventuellement traversé l’Atlantique, achetés au vingtième siècle par le collectionneur francophile, Douglas Huntly Gordon. Léguée à l’Université de Virginie à la mort de M. Gordon, cette fabuleuse collection crée une situation paradoxale pour la bibliothèque, qui a la responsabilité de préserver aussi bien que de donner accès à cet héritage. L’Internet et la technologie numérique se font un outil puissant pour adresser ces buts en principe contradictoires. Des projets de numérisation (comme celui-ci) vise à effacer les frontières physiques qui limitent l’accès aux livres.

Grâce à l’aide de la Fondation Florence Gould, la Bibliothèque de l’Université de Virginie, en collaboration avec la Faculté de littérature et de langue française de l’Université de Virginie, est en train de créer des facsimiles numériques d’une sélection de livres de la collection, afin de les rendre accessibles par Internet (en format image), avec des renseignements sur les livres, les auteurs et les thèmes représentées. Le but du projet est double: élargir le rôle des livres rares dans la mission de recherche et d’instruction de l’Université de Virginie, et préserver les textes en créant des fac-similés numériques. La numérisation a commencé en 2003, et la première étape du projet sera disponible par Internet en hiver 2004. Dans deux ans, le projet vise à numériser cent livres dans les catégories d’oeuvres littéraires, livres d’emblèmes, livres pour les femmes, le monde de la Renaissance, les guerres de religion en France, et la langue française.

Dans cette présentation, j’expliquerai l’organisation et les buts du projet, et j’examinerai les façons dont les projets de numérisation (celui-ci et d’autres) permettent aux professeurs, aux étudiants et aux bibliothécaires de travailler en collaboration afin de traverser ou de transformer les frontières de la lecture et l’étude des livres rares. Des exemples tirés du projet montreront également à quel point l’idée de traverser les frontières, physiques ou intellectuelles, fait partie intégrale du contenu de ces livres de la Renaissance. Ajoutés aux récits de voyages au Moyen Orient et au Nouveau Monde, de nombreux livres présentent des traductions de textes grecs, latins et italiens, avec des réflexions sur la nature même de la traduction et sur la traversée de frontières linguistiques.

Finalement, un grand nombre des livres à numériser pour ce projet ont été imprimés à Lyon, dans la Renaissance. Il me semble essentiel de les ramener chez eux, au moins de façon “virtuelle,” de voir comment, dans le contexte de notre projet, ils présentent et représentent d’importantes traversées de frontières, et de considérer ce qu’ils peuvent nous dire de la création et de la lecture des livres sans frontières.

Karen James has a Ph.D. in French Literature from the University of Virginia and a M.A. in French from the University of Michigan. She has served on the faculty of Roanoke College (Salem, Virginia), where she was Associate Professor of French, and taught as a Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia. She is currently Researcher and Grant Co-Director for the Gordon Project at the University of Virginia Library. On-going professional interests include French Renaissance literature, history of the book in Early Modern France, and the role of technology in humanities teaching and scholarship.

Jenkins (Christine)

Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Providing food for hungry minds” : American Librarians, the CARE-UNESCO Children’s Book Fund, and the Cold War, 1950-1958.

Even as the world was in the throes of World War II, plans were beginning to be drawn up by American organizations–including the American Library Association--to facilitate post-war reconstruction. For the members of ALA's Division of Libraries for children and Young People (DLCYP), this effort focused on ways to send American children's books to the children of war-torn countries. From 1943 to 1949, DLCYP were involved in two ultimately unsatisfying book-provision projects (with the Women's Council for Postwar Europe and the American Junior Red Cross). In 1950, DLCYP joined with the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) and UNESCO in a collaborative project, the CARE-UNESCO Children's Book Fund, through which librarian-selected American children's books were sent to children overseas. The question of precisely which books should be included in the book packages, however, was not an easy one to answer. The librarians were determined that only new books should be sent. Other forces–including American publishers--insisted that all the books be in English. CARE wanted to send whatever books might please the American charities that helped support them–The Boy Scout Manual, for example, was one such selection. In order to understand the various agendas that were being addressed through this program, it is instructive to trace the course of this project over time through an examination of the book titles recommended over time by the program's selection committee of veteran children's librarians. Which titles were approved and which were rejected? What was the character of the discussion that surrounded these choices? How did the criteria used change in the years that saw postwar recovery efforts increasingly reflect a Cold War sensibility? How did the perception of the children being supplied with books correspond with the books being selected for them?

Between 1950 and 1958, when the ALA children's librarians made the decision to end their involvement, tens of thousands of children's books were sent to schools and orphanages in some thirty countries. This paper traces DLCYP members' involvement in the Book Fund from 1950 to 1958 and reflects the ongoing tension between DLCYP's goal of satisfying children's diverse reading interests and CARE's Cold War agenda of showcasing American political ideals. Surviving records recall the political, cultural, and economic tensions of the 1950s as they impacted the "right book" choices for children overseas.

Jenn (Ronald)

Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III

From American frontier to European borders : the multiple border-crossing of Twain's novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Twain’s novels can be used as a case in point to illustrate the complexity implied by the transfer of books and the polysemy of the word “border”. The study of the transatlantic transfer of Twain’s novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn offers an occasion to verify the relevance of Michael Winship’s statement according to which “books […] are no respecters of national borders”. It also shows that the notion can be extended to the literary borders that exist between genres and that, far from travelling in a straight line, books follow astonishing patterns. The study of translations, which are the result of cultural exchange, helps shape a truly international approach to the history of the book in so far as it provides a comparative and contrastive approach from which the common points and differences between the histories of books emerge.

The case of Tom Sawyer offers an amazing criss-cross pattern. Publication was delayed in the States in order to secure British copyrights but this move had side-effects. Pending publication at home, the domestic market was flooded with pirate versions published north of the border and copied from hastily imported British versions. When it was translated into French from the same British version, the novel, originally aimed at a wide audience in terms of age and sex groups, was turned into literature for children if not for schoolchildren. This is obvious when one comes to examine the profile of the Paris-based publishing and printing house: A. Hennuyer. Tom Sawyer (translated 1884) and Huckleberry Finn (1886) were handled as prize / gift books for the younger generation, thereby crossing the border between genres.

It is only during the period that has come to be known as the Cold War that Huckleberry Finn crossed the border from children’s literature to adult literature. The original translation (1886) being so far from the original, it can be considered that the 1948 version by Suzanne Nétillard is the first and by all standards the best of all those that were ever published in French and in France. However, far from being a mere sign of the growing appetite of the French readership for American cultural products, this translation, published by Editions Hiers et Aujourd’hui, a house exclusively concerned with Russian and Communist literature, provides yet another example of the complexity of acculturation-linked phenomena whereby the imported object is reinterpreted by the host country and transformed into a symbol of resistance. The case of Huckleberry Finn epitomizes the position assumed by France with regard to the Soviet Union and Marxism and shows that publishing and translation are far from devoid of ideology. Indeed, the novel which is now considered as the corner stone of American literature came to France not across the Atlantic but through the Iron Curtain. It is as a best-seller in the USSR, ranking second in the list of the most circulated American novels in that country, that it came to be noticed by the French publishing house. If the preface to the original edition, written by the French Marxist historian Frank Kanapa has long been noted, the profile of the translator’s career, Suzanne Nétillard, shows that ideology and political engagement, far from being limited to paratextual elements, is inscribed within the very text of the translation. Additional versions of both novels published in the following decades bear testimony of an ongoing struggle between publishing houses with material, ideological and symbolic stakes.

Agrégé dans le secondaire, je complète actuellement une thèse de doctorat sur « La traduction de la rhétorique enfantine chez Mark Twain », à l’Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux III sous la direction de Christine Bouvart (soutenance mai 2004). Plusieurs articles sur les traductions françaises de Tom Sawyer et Huckleberry Finn sont en cours de publication (RFEA 98, Palimsestes 16, actes du colloque sur le DIL à Aix-en-Provence 2002) ainsi qu’un article sur Twain et l’Asie (Frontières). J’ai par ailleurs pris part à l’atelier édition du congrès SAES à Grenoble en mai 2003, sous la direction de madame Cachin.