CONTACT

François Dupuigrenet Desroussilles graduated from the École nationale des Chartes and the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris (1976). He was curator of rare books in the Bibliothèque nationale (1978-1995), director of the French national school for librarians, ENSSIB (1995-2005), visiting professor at the university of Italian Switzerland (1998-2005), scholar in residence at the Ecole normale supérieure Lettres et sciences humaines (2005-2006), and curator of rare books at the Institut de France (2006-2007) before becoming professor of Humanities at FSU. For thirty years he taught and published research on the Bible in early modern Europe, the mise en page of Latin poetry during the Renaissance and Baroque era, and the Italian book in France during the sixteenth century. He was a founding member of the Consortium of European Research Libraries and a member of its board (1991-2004), and president of the Institut d’étude du livre (1988-1994) and the Institut d’histoire du livre (2002-2005).

Because he always considered that the book, even in its most ancient periods, was essentially nomadic, not sedentary, his research focuses on the movement and the transformation of texts and images as they crossed national, religious and cultural borders in the Mediterranean and Western Europe during the medieval and early modern period. In the words of an Irish medieval riddle: “It has no mouth and yet it talks, it has no legs and yet it walks. What is it? A book.” The title of one of the conferences he organized is telling: The travelling book. His main book so far, Dieu en son royaume, presently under major revision, emphasizes the constant metamorphosis of biblical texts in France between the time of Saint Louis and the French revolution. A rigorous bibliographical analysis of Biblical production and diffusion leads to studies of the Davidic image of French kings, the Biblical tragedies of Racine or the religious grands motets of seventeenth century court composers. It is this approach that led him to join the history of text technologies initiative where textual culture encompasses the whole process of production, reproduction, circulation and reception of “texts” intended in the very wide sense that D.F. McKenzie gave to the word in his “heretical classic” Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (1985).

During the 2008 spring semester he taught a graduate course on The Bible as a Book. The Bible from Script to Print. 13th to 18th century (Hum 6939 02), that is proposed on a yearly basis as of fall 2008. It is an introduction to the textual history, production, diffusion, graphic presentation and social appropriation of the Bible, with special emphasis on England and France. During the spring 2009 semester he will teach another graduate course on The Visual Space of the Book. Antiquity to Twentieth Century (Hum 6939, section to be attributed). He designed other graduate courses on the courtly book in England and France during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, and the early history of book collecting.

Selected Books
- Dieu en son royaume. La Bible dans la France d’autrefois (13e-18e siècle), Paris, Editions du Cerf, 1991
- Regards sur le livre (Art. Histoire. Technique), Paris, Editions du Sorbier, 1997
- Trésors de la Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Nathan, 1987

Selected articles
2004. La Bible de Barbe Bleue. « Cahiers de médiologie » (17)
1999. La galaxie Tsaï-Loun. « Cahiers de médiologie » (6) Revised edition of a 1983 article published in “Traverses”, the journal of the Centre Pompidou.
1995. Les représentations du livre chez Clouet et Vélasquez. In La symbolique du livre dans l’art occidental du haut moyen âge à Rembrandt. Bordeaux: Société des bibliophiles de Guyenne
1989. Les temples du livre, Le lieu théâtral à la Renaissance, Les Académies en France et en Italie à la Renaissance, Aux frontières de l'imprimé. In Atlas des littératures. Paris: Encyclopedia Universalis.
1988. La contrefaçon des éditions bibliques de Port Royal. Les Presses grises. La contrefaçon. Actes du colloque de Dijon, 12-14 mai 1987 Paris: Aux amateurs de livres.
1987. Pour une étude de la production catholique en français au XVIIIe siècle. In La Bible au siècle des Lumière. Paris: Beauchesne.
1984. Sept problèmes de l'édition port-royaliste du psautier en français. « Revue de la Bibliothèque nationale »
1984. Au-delà des variantes. Notes sur les collections d’atelier dans les textes imprimés en Italie au XVIe siècle. In Réécritures 2 : commentaires, parodies, variations dans la littérature italienne de la Renaissance. Paris: CNRS.

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