Literae, amici, nugae: The Deceptions of Learned Correspondence in Seventeenth-Century Europe

• In Event: Beyond the Republic of Letters I: Practices of Correspondence in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which seventeenth-century scholarly letters served to advance religio-political agendas under the cover of intellectual and moral ideals, such as philological objectivity, friendship, and the free exchange of information and ideas. To do this, they had to be carefully crafted pieces of rhetoric. They also had to become detached from other activities that occupied scholars' lives, such as diplomacy, the book trade, and censorship. This process of detachment was reinforced by the archiving and publication of scholars' letters, enabling ostensibly self-sufficient canons of learned correspondence to emerge. If modern scholars struggle to recognise such problems when they use correspondence, it is partly because they still depend on the products of these seventeenth-century developments. I shall illustrate this with examples drawn from archival research on well-known correspondents and those who collected, edited and read their letters, ranging from Isaac Casaubon (†1614) to Richard Simon (†1712).

Author

• Nicholas Hardy, Trinity College, University of Cambridge