Collaboration and Interdisciplinarity in the Republic of Letters

The Republic of Letters emerged during the seventeenth century as a concept to describe the interaction between scholars across Europe and beyond. While the concept was an imaginary one, it was firmly grounded in a reality of close circles of interaction between intellectuals, which had always existed but was now endowed with a renewed sense of collaboration and participation within this community without barriers of statehood or creed.

These fifteen essays explore differing aspects of collaboration and interdisciplinarity in the context of the radical change in mindset that the emergence of the Republic of Letters had fostered. Essays deal with French and English theatre, travel writing, the identity of the woman writer, the nature and function of gossip, scholarly interaction, and political and theological ideologies. The concluding essay provides a synthesis of the nature of seventeenth-century scholarship.

The volume offers new insights into the mechanisms and workings of the Republic of Letters and charters the transition of scholarly pursuit from being classified, even by some scholars themselves, as a solitary and sometimes pedantic pursuit to the notion of a network of ideas and interchange. This self-identification with a transnational league which knew no limits of geography, resources, gender, or class marks a radical transition in the history of ideas and was to have far-reaching consequences, solidly preparing the way for the Enlightenment.