Narrative Memory and Intellectual Network

In today’s ever-expanding publishing market, book creation, and distribution processes are no longer confined to professionals like authors, editors, and sales managers but lie within the grasp of an increasingly diverse readership. It is intriguing, then, that publishers themselves feel compelled to write about their craft, their publishing houses, and their experiences. These “editorial memoirs” engage readers well-versed in the book market and those who have direct interactions with publishers. This paradoxical relationship between readers’ knowledge of publishing mechanisms and publishers’ desire to explain their profession raises a fundamental question: why, throughout the history of modern and contemporary publishing, do publishers choose to write about themselves and their houses? To answer this question, we embark on a two-fold analysis. Firstly, we delve into the strategic decisions made by publishing houses concerning book selection, production, and dissemination. This examination sheds light on the distinct approaches adopted by various publishers and how they create their symbolic brand through the choice of books and publication methods. Secondly, we explore the narrative representations of the publishers themselves. The project studies the publishers’ memoirs, and what they write about their houses’ history, uncovering the events they choose to preserve and those they may forget. This investigation unveils the intricate interplay between historical documentation and personal memory, as publishers shape public perceptions of their shared past. The relationship between public perception and private imaginary reveals how a narrative memory works. To enhance our research outcomes and pave the way for future investigations, we could turn to CLARIN tools. The digitalization of archival material within the CLARIN repository offers an expanded wealth of data for contextualizing cultural phenomena. By linking this with digitalized book paratext, we can draw insightful connections between archival material and the published works themselves. Additionally, integrating data on the production process with book distribution enables us to reconstruct a comprehensive map of publishing houses, pinpointing their geographic locations and tracing the circulation of their books using the Geo-Browser software. In the second phase of our study, we could employ cutting-edge digital tools to analyze publishers’ autobiographies. Leveraging software such as TextTonsorium and Voyant for text analysis, we decipher the distinctive stylistic choices of publishers and investigate the processes through which historical facts are transformed into memories. By harnessing the theory of fields elaborated by Bourdieu and the vast resources offered by CLARIN and applying them to textual criticism and publishing studies, our project could illuminate new facets of cultural products’ circulation, the intricate relationship between history and narrative memory, and the reciprocal influence of private and public dimensions on intellectual endeavors.

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