European University Institute Library

Transforming the republic of letters, Pierre-Daniel Huet and European intellectual life, 1650-1720, April G. Shelford

eng

index present

non fiction

Transforming the republic of letters

electronic resource

dictionaries

666925247

April G. Shelford

Changing perspectives on early modern EuropeCambridge Social Sciences eBooks

Pierre-Daniel Huet and European intellectual life, 1650-1720

Early modern Europe's most extensive commonwealth -- the Republic of Letters -- could not be found on any map. This republic had patriotic citizens, but no army; it had its own language, but no frontiers. From its birth during the Renaissance, the Republic of Letters long remained a small and close-knit elite community, linked by international networks of correspondence, sharing an erudite neo-Latin culture. In the late seventeenth century, however, it confronted fundamental challenges that influenced its transition to the more public, inclusive, and vernacular discourse of the Enlightenment.<BR><BR> <I>Transforming the Republic of Letters</I> is a cultural and intellectual history that chronicles this transition to "modernity" from the perspective of the internationally renowned scholar Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630-1721). Under Shelford's direction, Huet guides us into the intensely social intellectual world of salons, scientific academies, and literary academies, while his articulate critiques illumine a combative world of Cartesians versus anti-Cartesians, ancients versus moderns, Jesuits versus Jansenists, and salonnières versus humanist scholars. <I>Transforming the Republic of Letters</I> raises questions of critical importance in Huet's era, and our own, about defining, sharing, and controlling access to knowledge.<BR><BR> April G. Shelford is Assistant Professor in the History Department at American University, Washington, D.C.--, Provided by publisher