Incipit: L’Évolution du savoir et des sciences culturelles au XXIe siècle

General:

Le comité de rédaction de la revue a demandé à Marie-Pierre Le Hir (Université de l’Arizona) et Guillaume Pinson (Université Laval) de réfléchir à l’acquisition, au développement, à l’évolution et à l’avenir des études théoriques et scientifiques en littérature et culture du dix-neuvième siècle. Ils ont composé leurs essais initiaux sans connaître l’identité de leur interlocuteur ni le contenu de leur essai; l’échange qui a suivi s’est déroulé par courrier électronique, dans l’ordre présenté ci-dessous.

Individual:

While Cultural Studies opened the door to all sorts of new thematic approaches, it is fair to say that this interdisciplinary field of research failed to live up to the expectations it had raised in the area of critical theory. Today, with the emergence of the Digital Humanities and the Public Humanities as the new cutting-edge areas of scholarly activity, new collaborative projects with Nineteenth-Century French Studies are not only possible, but already in the works. It behooves us, therefore, to examine which risks these changes might possibly bring along and to envision the future of our field in this context. (MPLH; in French)

As studies of the literary history of the nineteenth-century press have recently shown, reflections on the links between literary studies and cultural history, as well as on the study of large corpora and the relationships they establish between them, enable considerations of literature in increasingly broad terms. The digitization of documents leads to a profound transformation of how we can pursue research, making it possible to establish new links between them and to reflect on the uses that were made of them. In such a context, the meaning of “French literature” is no longer the same as before; it seems to go beyond the borders of France and cover and reflect a globalized reality. Similarly, the analysis of the potential historical links between the media revolution of the nineteenth century and the digital revolution we are experiencing today gives great value to literary studies and opens up important perspectives for new generations of researchers. (GP; in French)