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Gathering Memory: Thoughts on the History of Libraries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Christian Jacob
Christian Jacob*
Affiliation:
CNRS, Centre Louis Gernet, Paris
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Extract

Maps and libraries are ways of externalising memory and knowledge, making them not only concrete, visible and accessible, but also durable, reproducible, communicable and socially active. Both are linked to processes of totalisation. Maps add together and incorporate individual, particular and partial experiences of a space: they provide a summary and synthesis of points of view concerning a given territory, obscuring their empirical content in order to construct a coherent degree of visibility and intelligibility. Libraries represent the sum of the reading and knowledge of the individual readers who frequent them. A library is one of the places that embody the intellectual, literary and spiritual heritage of a community; it is here that written memory, with its importance as a foundation for identity, can be seen in complete and tangible form.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 49 , Issue 196 , December 2002, pp. 41 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2002

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References

Notes

1. Earlier stages in my thinking in this area include: ‘Navigations alexandrines: lire pour écrire', in Le Pouvoir des Bibliothèques. La mémoire des livres en Occident, M. Baratin and C. Jacob (eds), Paris, Albin Michel 1996, pp. 47-83; ‘La Bibliothèque, la Carte et le Traité: Les formes de l'accumulation du savoir à Alexandrie', in: Sciences exactes et sciences appliquées à Alexandrie (IIe siècle av. J.-C. - Ier siècle ap. J.-C.), Actes du Colloque international de Saint Étienne (6-8 June 1996), G. Argoud and J.-Y. Guillaumin (eds), Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne 1998, pp. 19-37; ‘La bibliothèque et le livre. Formes de l'encyclopédisme alexandrin', Diogenes 178, 'Aux origines du rêve encyclopédique', 1997, pp. 64-85; ‘Vers une histoire comparée des bibliothèques. Questions préliminaires, entre Grèce et Chine anciennes', Quaderni di Storia 48, 1998, pp. 87-122.

2. See Isidore de Séville, Etymologies VI, 3.1.

3. Il était une fois le livre, E. Portella (ed.), Paris, Éditions unesco, La Bibliothèque du philosophe, 2001.

4. For an initial comparative and typological approach to the ancient libraries, see section ‘Bibliothèques et lettrés' in Des Alexandries I. Du livre au texte, L. Giard and C. Jacob (eds), Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France 2001.

5. On the Chinese libraries see the crucial work by J.-P. Drège, Les Bibliothèques en Chine au temps des manuscrits (jusqu'au xe siècle), Paris, Publication de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient, CLXI 1991.

6. See Luciano Canfora, La Bibliothèque d'Alexandrie et l'histoire des textes, Université de Liège, Centre de documentation de papyrologie littéraire (CEDOPAL) 1992.

7. Two bibliographical landmarks: P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1972, I, pp. 305- 335; L. Canfora, La véritable histoire de la bibliothèque d'Alexandrie, Paris, Desjonquères 1986.

8. G. Nagy, ‘Homère comme modèle classique pour la Bibliothèque antique: les métaphores du corpus et du cosmos', in Des Alexandries I. Du livre au texte, cit.

9. M. J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study in memory in Medieval Culture, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1990, p. 33 ff. See also her contribution to the present issue of Diogenes.

10. M. J. Carruthers, op. cit., pp. 43-45.

11. Vitruvius, On Architecture VII, Preface, 4.

12. Natural History VII.24.

13. See C. Jacob, ‘From book to text. For a comparative history of philologies', Diogenes 186, April-June 1999, pp. 3-27.

14. For an overview of both the work and this question, see C. Jacob, ‘Ateneo, o il Dedalo delle parole, general introduction to Ateneo, I Deipnosofisti, Roma, Salerno Editrice 2001.

15. ‘Scribes, érudits et bibliothèques en Mésopotamie', in Du livre au texte. Des Alexandries I, cit. See also J.-J. Glassner's contribution to this issue of Diogenes.

16. This thought was suggested to me by my reading of A. Serrai, Storia della Bibliografia II. Le Enciclopedie rinascimentali (II). Bibliografi Universali, Maria Cochetti (ed.), Rome, Bulzoni Editore 1991.

17. See Diogenes 141, 'Les bibliothèques', the article by Gilles Lapouge: ‘Livres en flammes', Paris, Gallimard 1988. (N.d.I.R.)