On November 28, YU’s Division of the Humanities in conjunction with the SCW History Club presented the first event in a discussion series focusing on promoting dialogue between YU humanities professors and professors who have recently published books. The event featured Professor Rachel Mesch of the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Department interviewing Professor Jeffrey Freedman of the History Department about his most recent book, Books Without Borders in Enlightenment Europe: French Cosmopolitanism and German Literary Markets. The discussion highlighted both the content of Professor Freedman’s book on the 18th century book trade as well as the historical methodology involved in producing the book.
Professor Freedman’s monograph is a unique contribution to the field of History of the Book, which examines the cycle of literary communication between author, mediator, and reader. Examining the book as a force in history, the book historian emphasizes the importance of the material incarnation of the text. Professor Freedman’s book is distinctive in that it examines the transnational trade, rather than focusing on discrete countries as other historians do.
Throughout the discussion, Professor Freedman shared details about the writing process. When conducting historical research, he advised that it is important to have the patience to sift through hundreds of pages of letters and documents before finding one that turns out to be especially valuable. This particular book was based on his dissertation for his PhD from Princeton University in 1991 and so was over twenty years in the making. His strategy for this work was to honor the peculiarity of individual characters, while placing them in broader historical context.
Professor Freedman also discussed the geographical importance of the archive in which he conducted the majority of his research. He studied for two years in the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel, or STN, in Switzerland, the major center for French publishing in the 18th century. French was the universal language of the time; it was the language of the educated classes, much like English is today. When censorship was rampant in the pre-French Revolution years, famed authors such as Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau published their books abroad and disseminated them throughout Europe, often smuggling them into the French kingdom. Because of the STN’s centrality in the French publishing world, historians such as Robert Darnton of the Harvard University Library consider the sources found there as representative of the general book market of the 18th century.
In discussing the 18th century book trade, Professor Freedman debunked a few misconceptions about the difference between texts then and now. In the age of the internet, many people tend to think that digital texts are more changeable than print texts. On the contrary, Professor Freedman stressed: the great works of the Enlightenment mutated constantly with each edition. In fact, Voltaire would work with publishers to edit his own work. The STN took on an authorial role often as much as the author of the book himself.
Professor Freedman also mentioned that people often believe that we read in a much more fluid manner today, jumping from page to page by following internet links rather than reading a book from beginning to end. Yet Freedman emphasized that the difference between modern reading and reading in the 18th century was not quite so stark. Many 18th-century readers read and recorded ideas in a fluid manner by keeping commonplace books. In these books, they noted random quotations and other snippets that were meaningful to them, along with their own observations, but without conscious ordering; the books are read from quotation to quotation, rather like modern readers read from link to link.
The presentation was followed by a Q&A session with students and faculty, who came from a range of humanities disciplines including history, English, French, and sociology. While enjoying delicious refreshments, event attendees had the opportunity to meet and continue the discussion afterward in a more informal setting.