CFP: Shaping the Republic of Letters: Communication, Correspondence and Networks in Early Modern Europe

A well known metaphor of the early European modernity and an important instrument in the understanding of seventeenth-century thought, the "Republic of Letters" was, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, primarily a label for new projects of intellectual and scientific association. Various models for the Republic of Letters have been investigated and described as closed circles or open networks, shaped around a variety of elements: scientific societies, intellectual networks, formal or informal circles of intellectuals, proponents of the new and old philosophies. What all such models had in common was a an ideal of shaping communities around a moral, intellectual and sometimes a religious project understood as a reformation of the (whole) human being.   

This special issue of the Journal of Early Modern Studies aims to bring together articles devoted to the investigation of such models of early modern communities governed by the ideal of the Republic of Letters. The journal is particularly seeking papers dedicated to the exploration of various ways of disseminating and communicating knowledge within the Republic of Letters, with a special focus on the exchanges between the East and the West of Europe.   

Please send your contributions no later than the 1st of March 2012 to:

Journal of Early Modern Studies 

[email protected]

Format: 

Papers: maximum 10,000 words; in English or French, with an abstract and key-words in English 

Book reviews: maximum 2,000 words 

Review essays: maximum 4,000 words   

For the style guide see Guidelines for Authors.