Cultures of Knowledge: An Intellectual Geography of the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters

We are pleased to announce the inaugural Cultures of Knowledge seminar series, which will take place in Trinity Term 2010 on Thursdays at 3–5pm in the Colin Matthew Room of the History Faculty. Entitled ‘Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe’, and convened by Pietro Corsi and Peter Harrison, the seminar features an impressive programme of ten leading international authorities on seventeenth-century correspondents and correspondence networks, and papers and discussion will be followed by a wine reception. For the full programme and further details, please see here. The seminar poster (pdf) can be downloaded on the right.

Exploring the hard copy index in the Selden End of Duke Humfreys Library in the Bodleian

We are delighted to announce that Dr Kim McLean-Fiander will be joining the Project as an Editorial Assistant. Kim will be working intensively with the digitized version of the Card Catalogue of MS Correspondence in the Bodleian Library (which will form an initial core of material for our union catalogue of seventeenth-century letters), proofing the keyed texts and bringing them into conformity with Project standards. Her academic research touches upon the intellectual networks of seventeenth-century women, while she has wide-ranging experience of cataloguing and editing at the Bodleian Libraries and at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. For a full profile see here.

Papers are sought for a major conference on ‘Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain, 1550-1640’, which will take place at the University of Plymouth on 14-16 April 2011. According to the organizers, the conference aims to ‘enhance our understanding of epistolary culture and to challenge accepted models of epistolarity through the study of letter-writing practices in all their nuanced complexity, ranging from the textual production of letters, their subsequent delivery and circulation, to the various ways in which letters were read and preserved for posterity’. Abstracts should focus on one the following key themes:

• The materiality of the letter: the physicality of correspondence (paper, ink, seals, folding) as well as the social context of epistolarity (composition, delivery, reading, archiving);
• Correspondence networks, the circulation of letters, postal systems, and modes of delivery;
• Letters, news, and intelligence;
• Authenticity, deception, and surveillance: forgeries, secrecy, ciphers, and codes;
• Women’s letters and the gendered nature of letter-writing;
• Epistolary literacies, social hierarchies, and the acquisition and diffusion of letter-writing skills;
• Manuscript letters and letters in print;
• The letter as a cultural genre and the rhetorics of letter-writing;
• Humanistic letter-writing practices and the familiar letter; letter-writing manuals and models; education, pedagogy and learning to write letters;
• Categories or types of letters: suitors’ letters, letters of petition, love letters, letters of condolence;
• Genres of printed letters: prefatory letters, dedicatory letters, address to the readers;
• Staging the letter: letters and letter-writing in drama;
• Editing and the digitization of correspondence.

Proposals of 300 words (including titles) should be sent to James Daybell (james.daybell(at)plymouth.ac.uk) and Andrew Gordon (a.gordon(at)abdn.ac.uk) by 1 July 2010. For further details, please see the full call.

Exploring Early Chinese Correspondences

Dr William Poole, a member of the English Faculty and New College and one of our John Aubrey researchers, is scheduled to give two lectures relevant to the Project in Oxford in the coming fortnight. The first, which will take place at the Taylor Institution under the auspices of the Oxford Bibliographical Society on Monday 1 March at 5.15pm, will explore the earliest surviving English-Chinese correspondence, which dates from 1687-88 (see the poster on the right). The second, which will take place at the Museum of the History of Science on Tuesday 9 March at 7pm, will explore the relationship between Oxford and the Royal Society in the seventeenth century, and forms part of the Museum’s year-long season of activities marking the 350th anniversary of the Society. For further details, see the MHS website. Update: these lectures are now online.

Detail from 'Death on the Battlefield', by Stefano della Bella (c.1648). Image courtesy of Leigh Penman.

Dr Leigh Penman, our Samual Hartlib Postdoctoral Fellow, has published an article entitled ‘The Unanticipated Millennium: Orthodoxy, Heterodoxy and Chiliastic Error in Paul Egard’s Posaune der goettlichen Gnade und Liechts (1623)’ in Pietismus und Neuzeit 35 (2009), 11–45. The article situates Egard and his unusual devotional work within several contexts (biographical, literary, and church historical), and problematizes contemporary distinctions between heterodoxy and orthodoxy. Although Egard was a well-regarded Lutheran pastor, the content of Posaune was decisively influenced by his familiarity with heterodox literature of the period, as well as his personal acquaintance with figures such as Joachim Morsius, Hans Engelbrecht, Nicolaus Teting, and others. Egard’s case demonstrates the power some heterodox ideas (specifically millenarian ones) possessed during this period, as well as the influence of networks of heterodox thinkers.

An international, interdisciplinary conference on ‘From Space to Place: The Spatial Dimension in the History of Western Europe’ will take place at the German Historical Institute on 16-17 April 2010. Organised by the Centre for Research in History and Theory at Roehampton University, and featuring contributions from historians, geographers, anthropologists , archaeologists, and literary scholars, the conference will challenge the idea of place or space in history as an unreflected essentialist category linked to tradition and immutability, and will show how it was instead socially and culturally constructed, mediated, and contested. There will be broader reflections on historiography and spatial theory as well as case studies from a wide chronological span (including many from the medieval and early modern period). For programme and booking information see the conference website.