5. Histoire et Littérature. Questions de méthode

5. Michèle Duchet and Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie : History and literature : Methodological questions. With regard, principally, to the Encyclopedia and Utopia, M. Duchet questions the historian on the conditions in which series can be constituted and analysed. Can literary texts be arranged in series like any other type of document ? Moreover, are the relationships between " signifiant " signifié " and " réfèrent " seen in the same light by the historian and the literary scholar ? E. Leroy-Ladurie shows, for his part, as far as series on a large scale like enlistment rolls are concerned, that the historian can also put off indefinitely an examination of the referent, and concern himself essentially with the internal logic of the corpus. However, he warns against the dangers of obdurate structuralism, and gives a good example — the rural corpus — of the precautions to be taken before constructing a series. Finally he demonstrates, with regard to the work of Restif, how taking the referent into account can help to put certain literary texts " into perspectiveDuchet Michèle, Le Roy-Ladurie Emmanuel. 5. Histoire et Littérature. Questions de méthode. In: Dix-huitième Siècle, n°5, 1973. Problèmes actuels de la recherche, sous la direction de Jacques Proust . pp. 49-58