| dc.description.abstract | What is the relationship between social life and the uses of the written word in both printed and manuscript forms? In this thesis, I seek to understand how and to what extent women participated as readers and writers by using the extant source material from Christiane Koren (1764–1815) and other members of a network that included women and men of the elite, all of which were scattered around the Christiania area. This thesis is the first academic work that utilises the full extent of Christiane Koren’s paper trail. Besides detailing her life in her journals from 1798, 1802, 1805, and 1808–15, she also wrote poetry and translated several German-language novels into manuscripts – all of which circulated within her network. Koren interacted with this network through actual gatherings, the circulation of her journal, and material exchange. By utilising Koren’s journals and other manuscripts as a vantage point, this thesis delineates how the written word in both manuscript and printed forms related to conviviality – that is, the cultivation of shared literary interests as practices taking shape within private households and extended beyond in-person gatherings by correspondence and circulating journals. The household remained a sociable locus where friends gathered or as a space from which they extended their presence with books, texts, letters, and other written material. By highlighting the different uses of the written word and wide range of texts as pertaining to a meaningful whole – their conviviality – a whole spectrum of practices and a range of actors appears. This thesis shows that the conviviality of Koren’s network ensured the participation of women in different practices involving the written word. While women were to a large extent excluded from the early forms of associational life, women belonging to Koren’s network participated widely during social gatherings in households. Koren and her female friends read texts both alone and aloud, borrowed and gifted them away, and discussed and shared their opinions on them. Moreover, they conducted similar activities with the male members of the network. Seen as a whole, the network of Koren offers unique glimpses into the world of the written word and its social uses in the period between 1798–1815. | eng |