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The Library and the Book

Forms of Alexandrian Encyclopedism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Christian Jacob
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Extract

The history of encyclopedism seeks to trace the metamorphoses and various cultural adaptations of three essential components. The first of these is an intellectual endeavor, reflecting the conception, hierarchy, and articulation of knowledge in a given society: How is the map of knowledge organized and defined? How do human thought and memory gather together and master all accessible knowledge? The second component can take the form of a material object, the encyclopedia - whether conceived as a book that unites the knowledge found in all other books, or again as the body of texts that, though not titled as such, belong nevertheless to an encyclopedic genre. The last constituent of the trilogy consists of the group of practices that fan out between these two poles, between the intellectual endeavor and the material object, and contribute to collecting, shaping, and transmitting the knowledge in a given society and time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 45 , Issue 178 , June 1997 , pp. 63 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © 1997 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

Notes

1. On Alexandrian erudition, the works of reference remain R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford, 1971, and P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford, 1972.

2. On the genre of collections of mirabilia (or "paradoxography") in the Hellenis tic world, see A. Giannini, "Studi sulla paradossografia greca, 2. Da Callimaco all' età imperiale: la letteratura paradossografica," Acme, XVII, 1, 1964, pp. 99- 140. The same author has compiled the fragments in Paradoxographorum Graecorum Reliquiae, Milan, 1965. The scientific stakes of the genre and its links to the Peripatetic tradition are clearly underlined by M.M. Sassi, "Mirabilia," in G. Cambiano, L. Canfora, D. Lanza, (eds.), Lo Spazio Letterario della Grecia Antica, Vol. 1. La produzione e la circolazione del testo. Vol. 2, L'Ellenismo, Rome, 1993, pp. 449-468.

3. See the collection of studies gathered together by G. Cambiano, Storiografia e dossografia nella filosofia antica, Turin, 1986, and the special issue of the Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, 1992, 3.

4. See, for example, Topics I. 14, 105b12, which clearly defines this process of eklogé from books and the classification of doctrines by subject.

5. J. Céard, "De l'encyclopédie au commentaire, du commentaire a l'ency clopédie: le temps de la Renaissance," in Tous les savoirs du monde. Ency clopédies et bibliothèques de Sumer au XXIe siècle, Paris, 1996, pp. 164-169.

6. For a general reflection on this field of knowledge, see R. Tosi, "La lessi cografia e la paremografia in età allessandrina ed il loro sviluppo successivo," in La Philologie grecque à l'époque Hellénistique et Romaine, Entretiens préparés et présidés par Fr. Montanari, Vandœuvres - Genève 16-21 Août 1993, Entretiens sur l'Antiquité Classique, 1994, vol. 40, pp. 143-197.

7. On this history, see L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature, Oxford, 1991 (3rd edition).

8. On this tradition, see A. Blair, "Bibliothèques portables: les recueils de lieux communs dans la Renaissance tardive," in M. Baratin and C. Jacob (eds.), Le Pouvoir des Bibliothèques. La mémoire des livres en Occident, Paris, 1996, pp. 84- 106; F. Goyet, Le Sublime du lieu commun. L'invention rhétorique dans l'Antiquité et à la Renaissance, Paris, 1996.

9. M. Vegetti, "La scienza ellenistica: Problemi di epistemologia storica," in G. Giannantoni and M. Vegetti (eds), La Scienza Ellenistica, Rome, 1984, pp. 427-470.

10. On the stakes and the methods of Diodorus' Historical Library, see L. Canfora, "Le but de l'historiographie selon Diodore," in H. Verdin, G. Schepens, and E. de Keysner (eds.), Purposes of History: Studies in Greek Historiography from the 4th to the 2nd Centuries B.C. Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leuven 24-26 May 1988, Louvain, Studia Hellenistica 30, 1990, pp. 313-322; see also his intro duction to Diodoro Siculo, Biblioteca storica, Palermo, 1986, vols. 1-4 pp. IX-XXV My outline of reading is intended as an extension of these analyses.

11. On this aspect see M. Vegetti, "Lo spettacolo della storia in Polibio. Genealo gia di un equivoco," in D. Lanza and O. Longo (eds), Il Meraviglioso e il verosimile tra Antichità e Medioevo, Firenze, 1989, pp. 121-128. In a work in progress, I develop this "cartographic" reading of Polybius' History.