Critical Editions/Additions for the French and Italian Collections, 12th to 20th Centuries

Description:

This project will enhance access for UW–Madison researchers in the humanities and social sciences to recent critical reeditions of important primary works by major French and Italian authors from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, currently not owned by the UW-Madison libraries. The project also seeks to acquire some secondary works in certain of those fields.

Having these works available locally would serve researchers of many disciplines on the UW campus. The authors of the titles proposed for acquisition include: Jean Bodin, Agrippa d’Aubigné, Charles Sorel, Montesquieu, Raynal, Jacques Derrida, and Gabriele D’Annunzio.

The project includes a number of multi-volume sets, whose acquisition can be difficult for regular collections funds to cover. It is necessary to have each of these critical editions in a complete set locally for consultation because of the fine-grained, sifting-and-winnowing work that faculty and graduate student researchers do with them. These are expertly edited, multi-volume critical editions of works by some of the most important writers and thinkers of the periods covered by our proposal. In some instances, these editions include primary texts that are not available in any print edition held by the UW–Madison.

Although UW-Madison researchers can borrow these critical editions through Interlibrary Loan, they can’t get full access to the wealth of information and commentary they contain, short of requesting all the volumes at once–which is not practical and can lead to volumes being lost in transit. The digital versions of these texts available to UW researchers are either non-existent or inadequate. Acquiring these titles would greatly benefit faculty and graduate student researchers in other departments.

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Anne Vila, Professor of French

CO-PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:

Laura Martin, Ibero American Studies and Romance Languages Librarian, Memorial Library

CO-INVESTIGATORS:

Jan Miernowki, Professor of French and Italian

Martine Debaisieux, Professor of French and Italian

Ernesto Livorni, Professor of French and Italian

Alex Taylor, Graduate Student in French and Italian

Andrea Quaini, Graduate Student in French and Italian