Circuits of Practical Knowledge

Bibliographic Data

ID8940844
AuthorsElizabeth Andrews Bond (0000-0003-1473-1210, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume39
Issue3
Pages535-565
Publication date2016-07-29
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrench Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00161071-3500309
OpenAlexW2501022558
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited37

Letters to the editor were published in the thousands during the 1770s and 1780s, shaping a forum that constituted an eighteenth-century information network. Such letters serve as a powerful touchstone for ideas that circulated among the French reading public, shedding new light on the cultural history of the Enlightenment. Drawing on world history and digital history approaches, this article analyzes a subset of letters that were exchanged and reprinted among provincial papers (affiches) throughout France. By visualizing the exchange of such reprinted letters as a network, it becomes clear that provincial readers did not read their local papers in isolation but instead were connected to a larger community that often included published missives from the surrounding généralité and the capital. The content of such letters communicated an optimism about the possibility of ameliorating daily life through incremental, practical changes, fostering a notion of a practical Enlightenment

Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Media studies · Optimism · Political science · Reading (process · Sociology · History · Language and cultural evolution · Law · Philosophy

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