Full Description
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the number of specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias grew from a trickle to a flood, while the number of disciplines they were devoted to grew from a handful to dozens, representing many varieties of knowledge. Specialized dictionaries - as most were called, whether lexical or encyclopedic - were far more numerous than general encyclopedias. Yet despite their importance - as sources of knowledge, for example, and as definers of disciplines - they have not been much studied. Drawing on Frank Kafker's methods for studying the period's general encyclopedias, as pioneered in Notable Encyclopedias of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1981), this volume examines specialized dictionaries as commercial products, collections of content, and cultural artifacts. Specifically, it complements a wide-ranging, analytical introduction sketching out the characteristics of specialized dictionaries in general with a series of individually authored but standardized case studies. The latter deal with dictionaries on a variety of disciplines, from the Bible to mining, and in five European languages. The volume concludes with an essay on Frank Kafker's influence on historiography.
Contents
List of illustrations
Introduction
Appendix
Augustin Calmet's Dictionnaire historique, critique, chronologique, géographique et littéral de la Bible (1719) Kathleen Hardesty Doig
Étienne Chauvin's Lexicon rationale (1692) and Lexicon philosophicum (1713) Giuliano Gasparri
A medicinal dictionary (1742-45) by Robert James: an Enlightenment reference work Alexander Wright and R. W. McConchie
John Barrow's Dictionarium polygraphicum (1735) Craig Hanson
Noël Chomel's Dictionnaire oeconomique (1708) Clorinda Donato
The Dictionnaire raisonné universel d'histoire naturelle (1764) Stéphane Schmitt
The Reales Staats- und Zeitungs-Lexicon (1704) Jeff Loveland
The Curieuses Natur- Kunst- Gewerck- und Handlungs-Lexicon (1712) Ines Prodöhl
The Dictionnaire universel de commerce (1723-30) Jeff Loveland
Nicolas Desroche's Dictionaire des termes propres de marine (1687): a linguistic tool for seafarers? Élisabeth Ridel-Granger and Michel Daeffler
Sven Rinman's Bergwerks Lexicon (1788-89) and the emergence of mining encyclopedias in preindustrial Europe Linn Holmberg
Frank Kafker and the social history of eighteenth-century encyclopedism Gregory S. Brown and Melanie Conroy
Bibliography
