Floris Solleveld Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen

f.solleveld@let.ru.nl

What happened to the Republic of Letters ?

Problem: The phrase ‘Republic of Letters’ is

ubiquitous in early modern and particularly 18th century intellectual history and marginal after 1800. What happened?

1. What was the Republic of Letters ? 2. Causes of decline / fragmentation

Outline

What was the Republic of Letters ?

1. A correspondence network communicating through letters, journals, and books

2. A symbolic economy main goods: information and prestige

3. An imagined community consisting of people who did not necessarily meet, but who addressed ‘the learned world’, invoked a shared set of values, and styled themselves as ‘gens de lettres’

The Republic of What?

Who was part of it?

Broadly: those who were in correspondence about scholarly affairs (but that includes a lot of non-scholars)

Narrowly: those who wrote for or were discussed in the journals (that includes all active members of academies)

Intermediaries: printers, agents, patrons, secretaries, salonnières, travellers

The Republic of What?

Textual basis:

1. Letters gathered in Electronic Enlightenment, Epistolarium, and collected correspondence editions

2. Journals like Journal des Savants, Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, Acta Eruditorum, Boekzaal van ‘t geleerd Europa, Gelehrtenzeitung (a dozen of these)

3. Historia literaria, Gelehrtenlexicons i.e. compendia of the learned world

4. Forewords, dedications, éloges

The Republic of What?

Institutional basis:

1. Courts (mainly early phase)

2. Academies and societies (from 1660s onward)

3. Salons (18th century)

4. Universities (problematic relation throughout early modern era)

5. Printers and book fairs

The Republic of What?

Transitions within the Republic of Letters:

After 1650: first learned journals, first (royal) academies, starting divide between ‘sciences’ and ‘letters’, French replaces Latin

Around 1700: Querelle des Anciens & des Modernes, Battle of the Books

Around 1750: Rise of the parti philosophique, salon culture, ‘philosophical history’

The Republic of What?

A lost world?

‘Republic of Letters’ does not disappear, but the phrase becomes less frequent and journals no longer name themselves after it

My hypothesis:

The Republic of Letters diluted and fragmented rather than disappeared

The correspondence network, the symbolic economy and even the imagined community continued to exist, but they no longer defined the learned world

A lost world?

Causes of fragmentation:

1. Too many scholars: the learned world was no longer ‘one correspondent away’

2. Academies and societies in every city: scholars could identify with their peers nearby rather than faraway correspondents

3. Specialization: one no longer addressed ‘the learned world’ at large, but rather colleagues or the wider (national) public

A lost world?

Changing attitudes towards ‘letters’: 1. ‘Letters’ cease to be synonymous with

‘scholarship’ > ‘literature’ gets its modern sense

2. The ‘building blocks’ of a text are increasingly hidden in favour of argument / narrative

3. Decline of ‘historia literaria’; fewer journals about ‘letters’ (except for Literaturzeitungen)

4. Shift from genres to disciplines: history, linguistics, philology, archaeology, art history

A lost world?

Correlated developments: 1. Ideologization: after the French Revolution,

scholarship becomes a means of defining political positions (liberalism, conservatism, radicalism > socialism, nationalism)

2. Napoleonic Wars > Francophobia, disruption of correspondence networks

3. Books get cheaper (steam press, stereotype printing, woodpulp paper) > wider public

4. National education systems in France and Prussia

A lost world?

A world well lost?

The RoL has never quite disappeared: 1. We still correspond, trade in symbolic goods,

and have a lot in common with fellow scholars 2. In spite of professionalization, the humanities

still carry on the pursuit of erudition But that doesn’t mean we should still

appeal to its ‘eternal values’

Conclusion

Thank you! Image: Constant, New Babylon

http://radboud.academia.edu/FlorisSolleveld florisotto.blogspot.com | f.solleveld@let.ru.nl