The Republic of Letters. The Literary Field in a Changing World.

Course goals

Students will:

• become acquainted with the organisation and function of the literary field in the modern era. This field includes the production, circulation and reception of literature and the process of value attribution to literary texts;
• gain knowledge of research traditions and debates concerning literary institutions;
• be able to apply digital methods and tools to datasets, to design a research project and to carry this out using quantitative analysis.

Content

The concept of the ‘Republic of letters’ emerged in the Renaissance and currently refers to an international community of authors, translators, publishers, book sellers, critics and academics etc., who are involved in the process of producing, disseminating and accessing literature. In this course we will specifically focus on the different ways value is attributed to literature and on the agents/institutions that are involved in this process. Our perspective will be international, comparative and sociological. Our approach will be quantitative (using computational tools) as well as qualitative. Students will study current theories and debates on institutional research, gain knowledge about translation theory and empirical research practices, learn to use and analyse big datasets with computational techniques and develop a research project themselves.

Additional information

This course explicitly aims at improving the digital skills of students in Literary Studies.

Three out of four courses of the Literary Studies specialisation have to be completed.