Summary of Roger Chartier’s “Forms and Meanings” Essay Example

Summary of Roger Chartier’s â€Å"Forms and Meanings† Essay â€Å"When the ‘same’ text is apprehended through very different mechanisms of representation, it is no longer the same† (Chartier 2). This phrase was meant to become central in Roger Chartier’s Forms and Meanings: Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer. In his profound historical research, the author was trying to persuade his readers that when the forms of representing texts changed, the meaning of those texts changed, too. However, does it really matter, whether the text is presented in the form of a book or a hypertext?In his work, Chartier explores the impact of social and societal changes on the forms of text representation. However, as the reader expects to gain an insight into historical development of textual forms, he is rather involved into the investigation of sixteenth century’s works of writing, including those of Moliere and Shakespeare. It seems that Roger Chartier has chosen a misleading title for his book: he eval uates the development of texts from Codex to Computer only in the first chapter. Moreover, Chartier is evidently biased against the implementation of electronic reading and writing media: â€Å"The idea of copyright is ill-suited to the means of composition afforded by electronic databases† (Chartier 21). As a result, one may summarize Chartier’s book as the selection of historical researches which do not create any logical connection between the oldest and the newest forms of text representation.Chartier negatively evaluates the transition from manual to electronic writing, and implies that this transition is equal to the revolution which took place when humans have learned to write. It is difficult to argue with Chartier, when he recognizes the significance of writing to the society in general: â€Å"Even in our society, oral text and visual medium have not only enjoyed a continuity, but they have not resumed their status as among the principal modes of discourse wi th an even greater power of projection† (Chartier 52). Do we have the right to state that electronic text media have created real revolution in the theory of texts? The reader is given sufficient space to choose the right answer to this question.