{"id":7326,"date":"2016-10-06T17:24:32","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T17:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7326"},"modified":"2016-10-10T17:17:49","modified_gmt":"2016-10-10T17:17:49","slug":"at-the-centre-of-the-networked-early-modern-world-pierre-bayle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/?p=7326","title":{"rendered":"At the centre of the networked early modern world: Pierre Bayle"},"content":{"rendered":"

In these troubled times of trenches,\u00a0walls, and drawbridges, we could not be more delighted to announce the arrival in EMLO of Pierre Bayle<\/a>,\u00a0one of the foremost\u00a0citizens of early modern Europe\u2019s Republic of Letters. Bayle\u00a0resides at the very heart of this early modern community that corresponded\u00a0and networked irrespective of political border or\u00a0scholarly allegiance, and today we \u2014 together with our own international network of twenty-first century historians \u2014 remain firmly committed\u00a0to its reassembly.<\/p>\n

\"Nouvelles_de_la_R\u00e9publique_des_Lettres\"

‘Nouvelles de la R\u00e9publique des Lettres’, no. 1 (Amsterdam: 1684; source of image: Wikimedia Commons).<\/p><\/div>\n

A Huguenot refugee who moved to Rotterdam shortly before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Bayle published one of the first literary periodicals, the Nouvelles de la r\u00e9publique des lettres<\/em>\u00a0(1684\u20131687); he compiled the vast and remarkable Dictionnaire Historique et Critique <\/em>in two editions of\u00a01697 and 1702; and in his Commentaire philosophique<\/em>\u00a0(1686\u20131688) he issued a plea for religious tolerance based on moral rationalism. A critical edition of his extensive\u00a0correspondence is being published in print and\u00a0online. The Voltaire Foundation<\/a>, our esteemed partner here at the University of Oxford, is publisher of the multi-volumed hard-copy edition (under the direction of\u00a0Antony McKenna<\/a> and\u00a0the late\u00a0Elisabeth Labrousse<\/a>),\u00a0and publication of the impressive thirteenth volume<\/a> (containing the correspondence from the years 1703 to 1706)\u00a0has just been celebrated. The digital edition of the correspondence<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 overseen also by Professor\u00a0McKenna \u2014 is hosted at the Universit\u00e9 Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne<\/a>,\u00a0and it is on this interface\u00a0that the letters may be consulted together with images of the manuscripts. In EMLO you will find at present a calendar of the metadata of the first seven volumes of Bayle\u2019s letters, each record of which provides a detailed\u00a0reference to the hard-copy edition and offers\u00a0a link to the digital copy mounted at Saint-\u00c9tienne. Two incremental extensions to the calendar will be added over the coming months until the total of 1,791 letters is\u00a0in place.<\/p>\n

But of course, these letters are the ones\u00a0that that have survived. As Professor McKenna explains in his thorough and informative introduction<\/a> to the catalogue, Bayle\u2019s \u2018surviving letters bear witness to a great number of letters that have not\u2019. For example, the two hundred extant letters dated prior to October 1681 refer to more than\u00a0400 others\u00a0that have been lost. Consideration of these missing letters leads to Bayle\u2019s network becoming \u2018much more complex and significantly more dense\u2019, Professor McKenna oberves. We will be working together\u00a0in the coming months to explore this shadow archive and the extent of the\u00a0networks that held Bayle at their\u00a0heart. Keep watching: this drawbridge is firmly down and there is a great deal\u00a0more to come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In these troubled times of trenches,\u00a0walls, and drawbridges, we could not be more delighted to announce the arrival in EMLO of Pierre Bayle,\u00a0one of the foremost\u00a0citizens of early modern Europe\u2019s Republic of Letters. Bayle\u00a0resides at the very heart of this early modern community that corresponded\u00a0and networked irrespective of political border or\u00a0scholarly allegiance, and today we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7326\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.culturesofknowledge.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}