Thesis ID: CBB398237025

Writing the Thesaurus of Latinity: A Study in the History of Philological Practice (2019)

unapi

This dissertation is a history of the ways scholars have sought to observe the dispersed evidence that remains of an ancient language, and how they have looked to make timely, or even timeless, the knowledge generated thereby. It examines episodes in the development of a particular piece of philological equipment—the lexicon—from the Renaissance through the early twentieth century. Physicists have had their atlases and detectors, astronomers their star-charts and telescopes, botanists their herbaria: tools that isolated, augmented, and displayed objects of study to the observing eye. Meanwhile philologists—scholars of language—have drawn on instruments like the lexicon, which has likewise served to inform and enhance the observational capabilities of its users, both presenting philological particulars for manipulation and analysis, and, especially in its more ambitious forms, proving productive of new conclusions. By reconstructing the planning, assembly, updating, and outmoding of these lexicographical instruments, I argue, we can not only say much about central trends and tensions in the history of philology, but also uncover some of the ways that philological practices have intersected with those of scholars in apparently disparate fields. The dissertation’s first part centers on the French scholar-printer Robert Estienne (1503–59) and his Latin lexicon, the Dictionarium, seu Latinae linguae Thesaurus. Books owned and annotated by Robert and his son, the great lexicographer of Greek Henri Estienne (d. 1598), help tell a story of the information-management operations supporting the early modern lexical observator, the different identities available to the lexicon-maker, and the many attempts, extending into the eighteenth century, to update the Estienne Thesaurus. Part Two offers the most comprehensive history yet available of a project—begun in the 1890s in Germany and still in progress today—to write the history of the Latin language from an unprecedently complete collection of lexical evidence. This modern Thesaurus linguae Latinae and its millions-strong archive of lexical examples anchor an account of the apparatus, ambitions, and anxieties of the nineteenth-century philological observer, a figure linked not only diachronically to the workshop of the late-Renaissance printer, but also synchronically, to contemporary librarians, statisticians, astronomers, and even foresters.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB398237025/

Similar Citations

Article Klaus-Dietrich Fischer; (2012)
De medicina verborum traditorum in scriptis medicis post annum fere millesimum adhibita (/isis/citation/CBB770919962/)

Article Luana Salvarini; (2023)
Una tappa della fortuna del Galeno latino: l'Examen de ingenios di Juan Huarte (1575) (/isis/citation/CBB411926519/)

Chapter Elio Nenci; (2015)
L'edizione delle opere scientifiche del Rinascimento: tre esperienze a confronto (/isis/citation/CBB950009138/)

Book Waquet, Francoise; Howe, John; (2001)
Latin or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the twentieth Centuries (/isis/citation/CBB000101723/)

Book Josep Chabàs; (2019)
Computational Astronomy in the Middle Ages: Sets of Astronomical Tables in Latin (/isis/citation/CBB222038517/)

Article Alessandro Bartolini; Libero Aldinucci; (2020)
Storia e sorprendenti nuove proprietà farmacologiche dello zinco (/isis/citation/CBB875214404/)

Book Carla Camana; Ernesto Riva; (2017)
le farmacopee private in Europa dalle origini ai tempi moderni (/isis/citation/CBB412027120/)

Book Benton, Lauren A.; (2010)
A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400--1900 (/isis/citation/CBB001212372/)

Article Fabio Bellissima; Maria Silvestrini; (2017)
The «Mathematical Possibilities» of the Music Concept of Mode from Ptolemy to Messiaen (/isis/citation/CBB413487512/)

Article Merve Senem Arkan; (2019)
Past and present: cartographic history of Famagusta (/isis/citation/CBB455216539/)

Book Enrico Giannetto; Giulia Giannini; (2009)
Da Archimede a Majorana: la fisica nel suo divenire (/isis/citation/CBB945473809/)

Book Fabio Bellissima; (2022)
La scala musicale: una storia tra matematica e filosofia (/isis/citation/CBB817825244/)

Book Hanegraaff, Wouter J.; (2012)
Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (/isis/citation/CBB001201630/)

Book Salvo D'Agostino; (2018)
Letture di Storia della Fisica: Da Galileo ad Einstein (/isis/citation/CBB615311258/)

Article Timothy D. Johnston; (2021)
The pre-Darwinian history of the comparative method, 1555–1855 (/isis/citation/CBB381452515/)

Article Mason, John; (2007)
Bartering Problems in Arithmetic Books 1450--1890 (/isis/citation/CBB000831582/)

Book David Barrado Navascués; (2023)
Cosmography in the Age of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB595988066/)

Authors & Contributors
Bellissima, Fabio
Arkan, Merve Senem
Luana Salvarini
Bartolini, Alessandro
Barrado Navascués, David
Aldinucci, Libero
Concepts
Philology
Latin language
Astronomy
Philosophy
Medicine
Mathematics
Time Periods
Renaissance
Early modern
Modern
Medieval
Ancient
16th century
Places
Europe
Italy
Famagusta
Andalusia (Spain)
Padua (Italy)
Toledo (Spain)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment