Originally from
Lyon, he studied at the Ampère lycée (high school). Between 1964 and 1969, he was a student at the
École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud and, at the same time, he pursued a 3-year-degree (French licence) followed by a master's degree at the
Sorbonne (1966–1967). In 1969, he succeeded at his
agrégation in history.
He taught as an associate professor at the
Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris between 1969 and 1970. In the same year, he became assistant in Modern History at the
University of Paris I, then senior lecturer at the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). He became a lecturer (from 1978 to 1983) and then director of studies at the EHESS until 2006. In 2006 he was appointed professor at the Collège de France, holder of the "Written Culture in Modern Europe" chair. He also hosts the show Les lundis de l'histoire on France Culture, in which he talks with historians who publish books on modern history (16th–18th centuries).
The works of Roger Chartier are described by Dorothea Kraus as follows: "Authors, texts, books, and readers are four poles linked by Roger Chartier's work on the history of written culture; poles between which he attempts to draw connections through a cultural history of social life. The concept of 'appropriation' makes it possible for this perspective not only to give rise to these research topics, but also put them in touch with reading practices that determine appropriation, and which, in turn, depend on the reading skills of a community of readers, author strategies, and text formats."[1]
In 2009–10, he was the Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of European Comparative Literature in
St Anne's College, Oxford.[2]
Chartier, Roger. "Review: Text, Symbols, and Frenchness," Journal of Modern History Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 682–695
in JSTOR
Chartier, Roger. "Le monde comme représentation," Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 44e Année, No. 6 (Nov. - Dec., 1989), pp. 1505–1520
in JSTOR
Chartier, Roger. "Les arts de mourir, 1450-1600," Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 31e Année, No. 1 (Jan. - Feb., 1976), pp. 51–75
in JSTOR
Chartier, Roger. "Espace social et imaginaire social: les intellectuels frustrés au XVIIe siècle," Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 37e Année, No. 2 (Mar. - April 1982), pp. 389–400
in JSTOR
Chartier, Roger. "Review: L'ancien régime typographique: réflexions sur quelques travaux récents," Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 36e Année, No. 2 (Mar. - Apr., 1981), pp. 191–209
in JSTOR
Further reading
Hunt, Lynn. "French History in the Last Twenty Years: The Rise and Fall of the Annales Paradigm," Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 21, No. 2, Twentieth Anniversary Issue (Apr., 1986), pp. 209–224
in JSTOR
References
^Dorothea Kraus, "Appropriation et pratiques de la lecture. Les fondements méthodologiques et théoriques de l'approche de l'histoire culturelle de Roger Chartier", in : Labyrinthe n° 3, 1999, § 28
read online.