Networks, Interconnection, Connectivity

The map we draw of seventeenth-century French literary and intellectual culture is usually a small one, centered on Paris and Versailles to reflect the consolidation of intellectual and artistic capital under absolutism. Yet this process of centralization depended on the creation of strong infrastructures connecting France's seat of political and cultural power to the provinces and the rest of the world: an efficient postal system, Europe's largest network of foreign embassies, trade links stretching to Asia and the Americas. How might a focus on these networks - and on the agents, materials, concepts, and practices that constituted them - broaden our mental topography of seventeenth-century French culture? This question animated a rich discussion during the May 2014 conference of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature, held at Duke University and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The present volume represents a selection of the contributions to the conference.