Rethinking the Republic of Letters: Memory and Identity in Early Modern Learned Communities (Knowledge Communities) - Hardcover

Scholten, Koen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9048559855 ISBN 13: 9789048559855

Publisher: Routledge, 2025

Synopsis

This book offers a revisionist look at the historiography of the Republic of Letters and the community of learning in early modern Europe. It suggests a new approach, conceptualising the learned world as a web of imagined communities in which the members do not know all their peers. These communities formed through distinct memory cultures and the representation of and identification with collective identities. Rethinking the Republic of Letters looks at early modern biographical dictionaries (vitae), eulogies, letters, travelogues, and funerary monuments of early modern learned men to trace the (re)formation of these communities. It thereby offers a novel perspective on early modern learned communities – the many Republics of Letters.

About this title

About the Author

Koen Scholten is a historian of science and published on memory and identity in scholarly and scientific communities. He edited Memory and Identity in the Learned World (Brill, 2022) and received his PhD from Utrecht University on a thesis on the formation of early modern communities in the world of learning in 2023.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9048559855
• ISBN 13: 9789048559855
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 412