History:Republic of Letters

Short description: Long-distance intellectual community in early modern Europe and the Americas

The Institut de France was a learned society playing a key role in the Republic of Letters and Age of Enlightenment

The Republic of Letters (Res Publica Litterarum or Res Publica Literaria) was the long-distance intellectual community in the late 17th and 18th centuries in Europe and the Americas. It fostered communication among the intellectuals of the Age of Enlightenment, or philosophes as they were called in France. These communities that transcended national boundaries formed the basis of a metaphysical republic. Because of societal constraints on women, the Republic of Letters consisted mostly of men.

The Republic of Letters relied heavily on handwritten letters for correspondence.

Historians are presently debating the importance of the Republic of Letters in influencing the Enlightenment. Dena Goodman and Susan Dalton hold the view that women played a role in the Enlightenment.

History

The first known occurrence of the term in its Latin form (Respublica literaria) is in a letter by Francesco Barbaro to Poggio Bracciolini dated July 6, 1417. Currently, the consensus is that Pierre Bayle first translated the term in his journal Nouvelles de la République des Lettres in 1684. But there are some historians who disagree and some have gone so far as to say that its origin dates back to Plato's Republic.

Academies like the Royal Society encouraged discourse and debate that led to enlightenment. Their motto Nullius in verba (take nobody's word for it) embodied the spirit of inquiry and scientific investigation.

The Royal Society primarily promoted science, which was undertaken by wealthy gentlemen acting independently. The Royal Society created its charters and established a system of governance. Its most famous leader was Isaac Newton, president from 1703 until his death in 1727. Other notable members include diarist John Evelyn, writer Thomas Sprat, and scientist Robert Hooke, the Society's first curator of experiments. It played an international role to adjudicate scientific findings, and published the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society edited by Henry Oldenburg.

The seventeenth century saw new academies open in France, Germany, and elsewhere. By 1700, they were found in most major cultural centers. Anne Goldgar argues that, in the transitional period between the 17th century and the Enlightenment, the most important common concern by members of the Republic was their own conduct. In the conception of its own members, ideology, religion, political philosophy, scientific strategy, and other intellectual or philosophical frameworks were not as important as their own identity as a community.

Presumed portrait of Mme Geoffrin, by Marianne Loir (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.)

A radical critique of worldliness, inspired by Rousseau, emerged in salons after 1770. These radicals denounced the mechanisms of polite sociability and called for a new model of the independent writer who would address the public and the nation.

See also

• Coffeehouse
• Daniel Roche
• Dictionnaire philosophique
• Encyclopédie
• English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries
• Robert Darnton
• Science in the Age of Enlightenment
• Societas eruditorum incognitorum in terris Austriacis

Further reading

• Edelstein, Dan; Findlen, Paula; Ceserani, Giovanna; Winterer, Caroline; Coleman, Nicole (2017). "Historical Research in a Digital Age: Reflections from the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project". The American Historical Review. 122 (2): 400–424.

Bibliography

• Bots, Hans; Waquet, Françoise (1997) (in fr), La République des lettres, Paris, France & Brussels, Belgium: Belin & De Boeck, ISBN 9782701121116 
• Brockliss, L. W. B. (2002), Calvet's Web: Enlightenment and the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century France, Oxford, England & New York, NY: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780199247486 
• Casanova, Pascale (2004), The World Republic of Letters, Cambridge, MA & London, England: Harvard University Press, ISBN 9780674013452, https://archive.org/details/worldrepublicofl00casa 
• Dalton, Susan (2003), Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres, Montreal, QC: McGill-Queen's University Press, ISBN 9780773526181, https://books.google.com/books?id=WL5Ji9koDJYC 
• Daston, Lorraine (1991), "The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment", Science in Context 4 (2): 367–386, doi:10.1017/s0269889700001010 
• Dibon, Paul (1978), "Communication in the Respublica Literaria of the 17th Century", Res Publica Litterarum 1: 43–55, ISSN 0275-4304 
• Evans, R. J. W. (1977), "Learned Societies in Germany in the Seventeenth Century", European History Quarterly 7 (2): 129–151, doi:10.1177/026569147700700201 
• Feingold, Mordechai, ed. (2003), Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, Cambridge, MA & London, England: MIT Press, ISBN 9780262062343 
• Fiering, Norman (1976), "The Transatlantic Republic of Letters: A Note on the Circulation of Learned Periodicals to Early Eighteenth-Century America", William and Mary Quarterly 33 (4): 642–660, doi:10.2307/1921719 .
• Furey, Constance M. (2006), Erasmus, Contarini, and the Religious Republic of Letters, Cambridge, England & New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521849876 
• Füssel, Marian (2006), "'The Charlatanry of the Learned': On the Moral Economy of the Republic of Letters in Eighteenth-Century Germany", Cultural and Social History 3 (3): 287–300, doi:10.1191/1478003806cs062oa 
• Goldgar, Anne (1995), Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750, New Haven, CT & London, England: Yale University Press, ISBN 9780300053593, https://archive.org/details/impolitelearning0000gold 
• Goodman, Dena (1991), "Governing the Republic of Letters: The Politics of Culture in the French Enlightenment", History of European Ideas 13 (3): 183–199, doi:10.1016/0191-6599(91)90180-7 
• Hunter, Michael (November 2010), "The Great Experiment: The Royal Society", History Today 60 (11): 34–40, https://www.historytoday.com/archive/great-experiment-royal-society, retrieved 2023-06-21 
• Israel, Jonathan (2001), Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650–1750, Oxford, England & New York, NY: Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780198206088, https://archive.org/details/radicalenlighten0000isra 
• Jacob, Margaret C. (2006), Strangers Nowhere in the World: The Rise of Cosmopolitanism in Early Modern Europe, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN 9780812239331 
• Kale, Steven (2004), French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability from the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848, Baltimore, MD & London, England: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 9780801877292 
• Konig, David Thomas (2004), "Influence and Emulation in the Constitutional Republic of Letters", Law and History Review 22 (1): 179–182, doi:10.2307/4141670 
• Lambe, Patricke (1988), "Critics and Skeptics in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters", The Harvard Theological Review 81 (3): 271–296, doi:10.1017/S0017816000010105 
• Lilti, Antoine (2005a), "Sociabilité et mondanité: Les hommes de lettres dans les salons parisiens au XVIIIe siècle" (in fr), French Historical Studies 28 (3): 415–445, doi:10.1215/00161071-28-3-415 
• Lilti, Antoine (2005b) (in fr), Le Monde des salons: sociabilité et mondanité à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, Paris, France: Fayard, ISBN 9782213622927 ; published in English as The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Oxford, England & New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015, ISBN 9780199772346 
• Lux, David S.; Cook, Harold J. (1998), "Closed Circles or Open Networks: Communicating at a Distance during the Scientific Revolution", History of Science 36 (2): 179–211, doi:10.1177/007327539803600203, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/2196/1/2196.pdf 
• Maclean, Ian (March 2008), "The Medical Republic of Letters before the Thirty Years War", Intellectual History Review 18 (1): 15–30, doi:10.1080/17496970701819327 
• Mayhew, Robert (April 2004), "British Geography's Republic of Letters: Mapping an Imagined Community, 1600–1800", Journal of the History of Ideas 65 (2): 251–276, doi:10.1353/jhi.2004.0029 
• Mokyr, Joel (2017), A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Princeton, NJ & Oxford, England: Princeton University Press, ISBN 9780691168883 
• Ostrander, Gilman M. (1999), Republic of Letters: The American Intellectual Community, 1776–1865, Madison, WI: Madison House, ISBN 9780945612636 
• Shelford, April G. (2007), Transforming the Republic of Letters: Pierre-Daniel Huet and European Intellectual Life, 1650–1720, Rochester, NY & Woodbridge, England: University of Rochester Press & Boydell & Brewer, ISBN 9781580462433 
• Stroup, Alice (1990), A Company of Scientists: Botany, Patronage, and Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences, Berkeley & Los Angeles, CA; London, England: University of California Press, ISBN 9780520059498, https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft587006gh&brand=ucpress, retrieved 2023-06-20 
• Ultee, Maarten (1987), "The Republic of Letters: Learned Correspondence 1680–1720", The Seventeenth Century 2 (1): 95–112, doi:10.1080/0268117X.1987.10555263 

External links

• Mapping the Republic of Letters, Stanford University Humanities Center
• Cultures of Knowledge, University of Oxford