Rethinking the Republic of Letters: Memory and Identity in Early Modern Learned Communities

Abstract

Rethinking the Republic of Letters offers a revisionist look at the historiography of the Republic of Letters and the European, early modern community of learning. It suggests a new approach by conceptualising the learned world as an imagined community, since the members did not know all their peers. These learned communities formed through distinct memory cultures and the representation and identification with collective identities. Rethinking the Republic of Letters looks at early modern biographical dictionaries (vitae), eulogies, letters, travelogues, and funerary monuments of early modern learned man to trace the (re)formation of these communities. It thereby offers a novel perspective on early modern learned communities: the Republics of Letters.