Forms and Meanings

Roger Chartier is Directeur d'Etudes at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, Professor in the College de France, and Annenberg Visiting Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of numerous books, including Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

"Drawing on a wide variety of evidence, including inventories of the costumes, program notes, and contemporary correspondence, Chartier provides a wonderfully rich account of what the performances meant."-Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionCh. 1. Representations of the Written WordCh. 2. Princely Patronage and the Economy of DedicationCh. 3. From Court Festivity to City SpectatorsCh. 4. Popular Appropriation: The Readers and Their BooksNotesSelected BibliographyIndex