About

Geoffrey Turnovsky is a faculty member in the French and Italian Studies department at the University of Washington. His research focuses on the history of reading, literary culture, and the book trade in early modern and Enlightenment France. Turnovsky's work explores the social and political contexts of literary production and readership, analyzing how texts were received, interpreted, and circulated among diverse audiences. His scholarship includes detailed studies of specific texts, authors, and readerships, such as the letters responding to Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves, and the material history of manuscripts like the 'Chroniques du samedi.' He investigates the intersections of literary history, book history, and cultural practices, emphasizing the materiality of texts and the sociological aspects of reading practices. Turnovsky has contributed to understanding the development of the modern literary market, authorial identity, and the evolving nature of readership in France from the 17th to the 18th centuries.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Humanities
• Computer Science
• Philosophy
• Art
• Sociology
• Law
• Linguistics
• Data science
• Literature
• Pedagogy
• World Wide Web
• History
• Library science

Selected publications

• Reading Typographically

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2024-05-10 · 1 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding

  Anxieties about the fate of reading in the digital age reveal how deeply our views of the moral and intellectual benefits of reading are tied to print. These views take root in a conception of reading as an immersive activity, exemplified by the experience of "losing oneself in a book." Against the backdrop of digital distraction and fragmentation, such immersion leads readers to become more focused, collected, and empathetic. How did we come to see the printed book as especially suited to deliver this experience? Print-based reading practices have historically included a wide range of modes, not least the disjointed scanning we associate today with electronic text. In the context of religious practice, literacy's benefits were presumed to lie in such random-access retrieval, facilitated by indexical tools like the numbering of Biblical chapters and verses. It was this didactic, hunt-and-peck reading that bound readers to communities. Exploring key evolutions in print in 17th- and 18th-century France, from typeface, print runs, and format to punctuation and the editorial adaptation of manuscript and oral forms in print, this book argues that typographic developments upholding the transparency of the printed medium were decisive for the ascendancy of immersive reading as a dominant paradigm that shaped modern perspectives on reading and literacy.

  PublisherDOI

• OHGE, Christopher. 2021. Publishing Scholarly Editions: Archives, Computing, and Experience.

  Textual Cultures · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Library science

  Book review.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Llevar el mundo de los libros al grand public

  Prismas - Revista de historia intelectual · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Humanities
  • Art
  • Humanities

  Roger Chartier y las migraciones históricas de la cultura escrita

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Anciens et Modernes : la Querelle à l’épreuve de la publication

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2022-01-01

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  International audience

  Publisher

• Reading Exercises

  Romanic Review · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Sociology
  • Literature

  Abstract Régis Sauder’s touching 2011 documentary, Nous, Princesses de Clèves, which follows a group of Marseille high school students over the course of a year as they read La Fayette’s novel while preparing for the Baccalauréat exams, juxtaposes two distinct types of reading: a reading in which the students are able to see themselves in the characters of the novel and a more difficult classroom-based reading that seeks to instill in the students, through conventional pedagogical exercises such as the explication de texte, an appreciation for the literary art and importance of the text. This essay explores the tensions between these two literacies, which become manifest in the film, especially in scenes where the students, who so easily relate to the novel’s characters, struggle with the more formal analysis. In a second part, inspired by the writings of Priscilla Ferguson, the essay explores the sociological and pedagogical implications of what seems, in the film, the incompatibility of these distinct appropriations of the text, as it pertains to the students in the documentary and to US-based French programs built on the literary curricula developed by pedagogues such as Gustave Lanson in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  PublisherDOI

• Literary History Meets the History of Reading

  French Historical Studies · 2018-07-30 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article revisits the letters written by readers of the Mercure galant who responded to the “gallant question,” posed by the periodical's editor in an April 1678 issue, regarding a central plot twist of Madame de Lafayette's novel La Princesse de Clèves. Highlighting the expansive, democratic, and participatory nature of this readership that connected with the unprecedented complexity of the novel's characters, scholars have imputed to this public a modernity reflecting that of the novel itself, often considered “the first modern novel” in French. Closely analyzing the letters in light of their arguments and of the novel's editorial history, this essay explores the implications of a disconnect between the work and the readers in question, who had perhaps not read the text and did not, in any case, empathize with its protagonist's dilemma as presented by the Mercure.

  PublisherDOI

• Chroniques des Chroniques du Samedi : l’invention d’un manuscrit

  Les dossiers du Grihl · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Les Chroniques du Samedi, ce recueil de lettres manuscrites qui tire son nom du cercle de Paul Pellisson et de Madeleine de Scudéry, dont le célèbre « salon » se réunissait tous les samedis, constitue un défi pour le chercheur qui tente de le décrire et de le définir. Il a commencé à faire l’objet d’analyses historiques et littéraires au xixe siècle, puis a disparu de manière encore inexpliquée aujourd’hui, avant d’être « redécouvert » en 1977 lorsqu’il fut acheté aux enchères par la Biblioth...

  PublisherDOI

• Crying into Print: Sentimental Reading, Spiritual Exaltation, and Typographic Standardization

  Romanic Review · 2016-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Research Article| January 01 2016 Crying into Print: Sentimental Reading, Spiritual Exaltation, and Typographic Standardization Geoffrey Turnovsky Geoffrey Turnovsky University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Romanic Review (2016) 107 (1-4): 103–126. https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-107.1-4.103 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Geoffrey Turnovsky; Crying into Print: Sentimental Reading, Spiritual Exaltation, and Typographic Standardization. Romanic Review 1 January 2016; 107 (1-4): 103–126. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/26885220-107.1-4.103 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsRomanic Review Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2016 by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Les lecteurs du Mercure galant . Trois aperçus

  Dix-septième siècle · 2016-02-23 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Touched by an Author: Books and ‘Intensive’ Reading in the Late Eighteenth Century

  transcript Verlag eBooks · 2016-12-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Albrecht Hausmann

  Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

  2 shared

• Vincent Desroches

  Agence Nationale de Sécurité du Médicament et des Produits de Santé

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• The Literary Market: Authorship and Modernity in the Old Reg…