H-France Review Vol. 3 (April 2003), No. 34
Editor's Note: As noted in the just published review of Greg Brown's A Field of Honor: Writers, Court Culture, and Public Theater in French Literary Life from Racine to the Revolution, the work is published as an electronic text, one of the first examples of a scholarly monograph so produced on the history of France. We are all well aware of the crisis in academic publishing in anglophone scholarship, and electronic publishing holds promise as one means by which to address this crisis. Electronically published texts also offer a range of new components that may be embedded within a text--components not easily considered under the current conventions of book reviewing. Therefore, in order to help educate us all about this new publishing format, I have invited Professor Brown to elaborate on some of the non-traditionally components of his text.
Greg Brown on A Field of Honor
Early modern cultural historians, whose work has greatly influenced A Field of Honor, have shown that the concept of the book did not begin with the printing press. Indeed, in the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, print did not replace oral or manuscript communication outright, but the material form of the printed book did become socially accepted as the guarantor of the integrity, fidelity, and singularity of the work that it carried. In the twenty-first century, we historians as authors and readers are living through a similar transition (rather than revolution) in cultural history, as printed sheets of paper bound together cease to constitute the dominant carrier medium for a book.
As in the early modern period, the changes in communication today are as much socio-cultural as technological, and the Gutenberg-e series in which my book has been published is intended to explore both aspects of this change. Further information about the program, including information for both individual and institutional subscriptions to either the entire series or any particular title, is available at http://www.gutenberg-e.org. These books are not, in the strictest sense, e-books. They are not created to be downloaded and then read through special software, such as Microsoft Reader or Adobe e-Reader (though such an option may become available soon). They are, instead, on-line texts to be read in ordinary web browsers, though a partial representation of the book (that is, the text only) is available on the site in PDF format for printing.
Once having obtained the book, readers may wonder how to approach this book. On one level, it is a single monograph, which develops its argument across six largely chronological chapters so it can be read as a traditional, print monograph.
Within and across these chapters, there are also many subordinate themes and stories. In preparing this work for publication as an electronic book, I have tried to make the sections into what hypertext theorists such as George Landow refer to as discrete lexias so readers interested in a particular writer or topic may select sections that tell a particular story. (One approach therefore would be to use the Gutenberg-e search feature, to search for a particular proper or common name or theme, either within a single title or across the library of books on the site. The current search function for A Field of Honor is a free text search of body text, section titles or metadata keywords; this function effectively replaces the index of a conventional print monograph. The publisher (Electronic Publishing Initiative @ Columbia University Press) is at work to enhance the search feature, making use of XML coding to allow for thematic searching across a broader library of electronic works in History.
Within the body of the book, each section leads logically into the next section, and a navigation menu always visible on the left of the screen enables readers to keep track of which chapter and section they are currently viewing. Within each chapter, the paragraphs are consecutively numbered, allowing for precise citation; each section heading includes an html anchor, allowing for precise linking or bookmarking. In addition to the navigation bar, the reader will encounter in the e-text internal links to relevant passages in other sections and chapters of the book.
Moreover, throughout the body of the book, the text is supplemented not only by conventional footnotes (which appear as subscript numbers hyperlinked to the notes) but also by links to specific entries in the appendices that are relevant to that section--such as an item in the glossary of terms, a primary document, an image (of which thumbnails appear in the body text itself), or an external web resource. These external resources include both on-line primary sources (mostly from the BNF Gallica site) and relevant historical or literary websites. These appendices - Images, Archive, Web Resources, and Glossary -- can also be accessed from icons that appear at all times in the menu frame at the top of the screen.
Readers of the electronic version therefore are consulting the entire work. Those who read only the PDF printouts of the text are reading what the publisher calls “a partial representation of an electronic work.” In short, ceci n’est pas un livre: the printed book is not a book. Though I expect many readers will feel most comfortable with the print outs of the text, they are encouraged to consult the electronic version if they wish to consult it in a thematic, rather than linear fashion, or to consult the appendices.
Gregory S. Brown
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
gbrown@unlv.edu
Copyright © 2003 by the Society for French Historical Studies, all rights reserved. The Society for French Historical Studies permits the electronic distribution for nonprofit educational purposes, provided that full and accurate credit is given to the author, the date of publication, and its location on the H-France website. No republication or distribution by print media will be permitted without permission. For any other proposed uses, contact the Editor-in-Chief of H-France.
H-France Review Vol. 3 (April 2003), No. 34
ISSN 1553-9172
