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How to Cite
Quinn, Edward. "archive." Writer's Reference Center. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 17 Apr. 2025. <http://fofweb.infobase.com/wrc/Detail.aspx?iPin=DLLT0077>.
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archive

Definition 
A place for storing documents or records. In literary studies, the correspondence, manuscripts, and personal papers of important writers are stored in major libraries. One example is the T. S. Eliot archive at Princeton University, which has been sealed until 2020. The Eliot archive forms the background to Martha Cooley's novel The Archivist (1998).

The term takes on new meaning in the work of the theorist Michel Foucault, who uses archive to denote the accumulated body of definitions that dominates a particular field of knowledge. For Foucault, the word author, with its connotations of an autonomous, creative individual ("the genius"), is an example of the archival nature of language in literary studies.

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