Networking across Centuries: How Structures of Literary Connections Inform Verbal Cultures

• In Event: Beyond the Chronotope: Reading Thematically across Temporal and Geographic Boundaries

Abstract

While network theories rely on an understanding of individuals connected in one time (and often in one place), they also pose challenges to conceptions of connection as bounded in time and place. This paper looks to two examples, two centuries apart, of literary networks which rely on interpersonal connections across space and time, in which connections with and via the dead are as vital to the literary system of the period as those among the living. Furthermore, it argues that each case study can only be effectively understood in connection with the other, establishing a network theory that is unbounded by time.

Author

• Anna Ivanov, Harvard U