Networks, Interconnection, Connectivity

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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 centrali-zation depended on the creation of strong infrastructures connecting Frances seat of political and cultural power to the provinces and the rest of the world: an efficient postal system, Europes 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 topo-graphy 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 selec-tion of the contributions to the conference.