Research summary
How has the civilization of the printed book reinvented literature? How has literature influenced the way we imagine places, and how does it continue to do so? It is questions like these that Dr. Claude La Charité, Canada Research Chair in Literary History, Creation and Print Heritage, is interested in exploring.
In studying collections of ancient books, La Charité and his research team are reinterpreting the history of Renaissance literature as a wellspring of knowledge. In this ambitious encyclopedic exercise, the works of Rabelais are emblematic. The team is reassessing the beginnings of Quebec literature in the 19th century as a polygraphic practice (writing in a variety of fields, without necessarily specializing in them), with a particular focus on Philippe Aubert de Gaspé (father and son) and Joseph-Charles Taché. They are introducing a dialogue between erudition and fiction, with literary history seen as a workshop for developing a potential type of literature: “erudifiction.”