
Contact Information
Fields of Interest
Biography
Prof. Turnovsky specializes in the literary and cultural history of early modern France and Europe, with an emphasis on print culture, early modern media, the profession of authorship, and on readers and publics in the early modern era. His book, The Literary Market: Authorship and Modernity in the Old Regime, appeared in 2010. His articles -- on writers and the commercial literary market; and on readers -- have appeared in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (SVEC); Studies in Eighteenth‑Century Culture; Revue de synthèse; Modern Language Quarterly; Romanic Review; Les dossiers du Grihl; and French Historical Studies.
Turnovsky's book Reading Typographically: Immersed in Print in Early Modern France (Stanford 2024) explores the rise of new paradigms of absorptive, moralized reading in early modern France and Europe. Focusing on key evolutions in print in 17th- and 18th-century France, from typeface, print runs, and format to editorial organization and punctuation, this book argues that typographic developments upholding the transparency of the printed medium were decisive for the ascendancy of immersive reading as a dominant paradigm that shaped modern perspectives on reading and literacy. Publications related to this research are here and here.
Turnovsky co-directs the UW Textual Studies Program, which offers a minor in Textual Studies and Digital Humanities and a Graduate Certificate in Textual and Digital Studies.
Research
Selected Research
Articles
- Geoffrey Turnovsky, "Reading Exercises. French Literature in the Classroom," Romanic Review 112, 2 (Sept 2021): 213-234. Download PDF
- Lisa Jane Graham and Geoffrey Turnovsky, eds. "Looking for Readings in Early Modern France: Forum," French Historical Studies41, 3 (August 2018).
- "Literary History Meets the History of Reading: The Case of La Princesse de Clèves and its (Non)readers," French Historical Studies 41, 3 (August 2018): 427-447. Download PDF
- "Chroniques des Chroniques du samedi : l'invention d'un manuscrit," tr. Cécile Soudan, Les Dossiers du Grihl 2 (2017), https://journals.openedition.org/dossiersgrihl/6795 Download PDF
- "Crying into Print: Sentimental Reading, Spiritual Exaltation, and Typographic Standardization," The Romanic Review 107, 1-4 (2016): 103-126. Download PDF
- Geoffrey Turnovsky, "Touched by an Author: Books and 'Intensive' Reading in the Late Eighteenth Century," Precarious Alliances: Cultures of Participation in Print and Other Media, ed. Martin Butler, Albrecht Hausmann, Anton Kirchhofer (Bielefeld, Germany: transcript Verlag, 2016), 135-155 Download PDF
- Geoffrey Turnovsky, "Les lecteurs du Mercure Galant. Trois aperçus," XVIIe Siècle 270 (Jan-Mars 2016): 65-80. Download PDF
- Geoffrey Turnovsky, "Authorial Poverty and Transformations in Readership, 1750-1850. The Case of Nicholas Gilbert," Romanic Review 103, 3-4 (November 2012 [appeared in December 2013]): 439-464. Joanna Stalnaker and NIcholas Cronk, eds.
- Geoffrey Turnovsky. "Authorial Modesty and its Readers: Mondanité and Modernity in 17th-Century France." Modern Language Quarterly 72.4 ( 2011): 461-492. Download PDF
- Geoffrey Turnovsky. "The making of a name: a life of Voltaire." The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire, ed. Nicholas Cronk. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 17-30.
- Geoffrey Turnovsky. "The Enlightenment Literary Market: Rousseau, Authorship, and the Book Trade." Eighteenth‑Century Studies 36:3 (Spring 2003): 387-410.
Reviews
- Review of Mark Curran, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe I: Selling Enlightenment. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. 231 pp. Illustrations, maps, charts. £110.00 U.K. (hb). ISBN: 9781441178909; Simon Burrows, The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe II: Enlightenment Bestsellers. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. xvi + 254 pp. Illustrations, maps, charts. £110.00 U.K. (hb). ISBN: 9781441126016. Download PDF
- Review of Elizabeth Eisenstein's Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending. Journal of Modern History 85, 4 (December 2013): 917-920. Download PDF