Book Practices & Textual Itineraries. From Text(s) to Book(s): Studies in Production and Editorial Processes

Working outward from the path traced by Hubert Nyssen in Du texte au livre, les avatars du sens, the essays collected in this volume examine the process by which texts are embodied in forms that give them the appearance of completion and finality. The passage from fluid, provisional textual states to the apparent solidity of the publlished book is explored in the light of recent developments in textual scholarship.
By engaging with archiva] records, with questions specific to periodical and serial publications and author- publisher interactions, the contributors to this volume call into question certain widely held assumptions about the processes through which texts become books. They present the relation between text and book as ultimately less straightforward than the one proposed by Nyssen. Instead, they seek to transcend the linear progress from text to book, establishing more dynamic connections between the multiple material states in which a given work or document has exited over the course of its history.