Working Group 5: Text and Ideas

Objective:

We go beyond a detached history of ideas and deliberately links the foundations of the history of ideas with the materiality of texts to be able to define the emergence of public spheres and the process of the formation of national consciousness in Central European countries. The impact of the printing revolution on transnational public spheres has long been seen as a driving force behind the Reformation and the Enlightenment. However, scholarship has moved beyond simplistic narratives, offering a more nuanced understanding of these processes. We adopt this perspective, viewing the Reformation as a long-term transformation and book printing as a key element in the broader process of communication. At the same time, we explore how print culture actively shaped identity formation, with national identities often constructed in opposition to the “other” (especially the Ottoman threat). Newspapers played a crucial role in fostering national identification through anonymous reading, while media historians suggest that such imagined communities also formed at regional levels through newspaper printing.

Analyses include

• how ideas of the Enlightenment can be traced in monastery libraries in Lviv and other East-Central European eparchies,
• in-depth research on the networks of dissemination
• strategies for circumventing censorship and adapting translated texts.
• the rise and decline of genres in Central Europe

To analyze these dynamics, we employ advanced digital methods, including:

1. Corpus linguistics to detect patterns of national consciousness in newspapers and other media.
2. Computational tools to store, analyze, and share bibliographic data and texts.
3. Co-citation analysis to trace ownership and cultural patterns in early modern library catalogues.

By combining historical research with digital tools, we offer new insights into the circulation of ideas and the role of print culture in shaping public discourse and identity in Central Europe.

Activities:

2026 | Organization of Summer YRI School together with WG 4

2027 | Organization of Summer YRI School together with WG 3

2028 | Organization of Spring Conference