Between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, European scholars envisioned themselves in-habiting an ‘imagined community’, a “Republic of Letters”, that transcended political and religious divisions and was bound together by the common desire to advance and spread knowledge. Modern scholars have variously described the “Republic of Letters” as the age of generalists and polymaths, who mastered ancient languages no less than mathematics and astronomy (Anthony Grafton), or rather as the “the age of eloquence,” when the recovery of ancient rhetoric promoted by Petrarch and Erasmus transformed and unified European culture (Marc Fumaroli). More recently, the new interest in social networks and digital humanities has led scholars to call for “a new Republic of Letters” and to investigate the impact of information technology on the study of texts and cultural memory, areas traditionally dominated by humanist scholars (Jerome McGann).

In our seminar we will explore the “Republic of Letters” from its emergence during the Renaissance to its consolidation and crisis throughout the Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment. In addition to a rich selection of texts from the Italian canon (including Aldo Manuzio, Galilei, Sarpi, Matteo Ricci, Elisabetta Caminer, Cesare Beccaria, Pietro Verri) we will also read a series of European authors who visited Italy or had a special influence on its intellectual life (Erasmus, Montaigne, Milton, Pierre Bayle, Diderot and D’Alembert). By reading early modern texts we will also investigate the different means of communication through which knowledge travelled across time and space, examining how books interacted and coexisted with letters and journals within the same ‘information order’. Finally, the selected sources will also lead us to ex-plore and question different methodologies (digital humanities, global history, newspaper and media studies, urban history, women’s studies, history of science) that are used today in early modern studies. Several classes will be held at the Bancroft Library to introduce students to the study of early printed books and to the rich collections available on the Berkeley campus.