[OPEN ACCESS] ARON L. OUWERKERK, “Mapping the ‘Republic of Letters’ in East Central European Correspondences”, in Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 13, issue 2 (Fall 2024)

ARON L. OUWERKERK, Mapping the ‘Republic of Letters’ in East Central European Correspondences [OPEN ACCESS]
Abstract: The significance of the ‘Republic of Letters’ as a Pan-European and cross-national concept is often addressed in scholarship on early modern intellectual history. Focusing on an extensive digital epistolary corpus of authors of East Central European descent from c. 1600 to c. 1800, this article aims to readdress this argument by analyzing the currency of the most frequently used terms in Latin that denote a sense of scholarly community (viz. respublica literaria and orbis literatus) from a combined quantitative and qualitative approach. Based on the results of this analysis, it is argued that with respect to this geography, terms referring to the Republic of Letters were not as vital and ubiquitous as modern scholarship may perhaps lead one to believe. As the supposed increasing geographical spread and frequency of these terms are oftentimes mentioned as signs of the growing currency of their underlying concept, it is important to realize that their continental occurrence seems, in fact, limited at best and erratic at worst. Consequently, it is argued that concerning the analysis of individual authors, the methodology adopted in this study can only yield a meaningful discussion in the case of a relatively large number of occurrences, as the absence of these terms could be regarded as the default ‘standard’ in the regions under discussion—and possibly beyond.

See also: Journal of Early Modern Studies, Volume 13, issue 2 (Fall 2024) / Table of Contents