Encyclopedia and Encyclopedism

Abstract

Renaissance encyclopedism can be understood in terms of the history of problems, the history of concepts, book history, and cultural history. Remaking classical and medieval models, encyclopedic writing ranged from modest plans to provide a “general education” to the impossible ideal of securing universal and complete knowledge in all the sciences. Given a changing disciplinary map, the flood of books, and new epistemological criteria, the notion of encyclopedic paideia increasingly competed with more systematic, if often idiosyncratic, efforts to order, transmit, and evaluate kinds and quantities of knowledge. Prospective as well as retrospective, synchronic and diachronic, propelled by the timeless desire to “know all” while responding to historical contingences of all kinds, Renaissance encyclopedism undertook a massive, multifaceted translatio studiorum variously driven by pedagogy, philology, antiquarianism, curiosity, faith in scientific and philosophical progress, as well as numerous material, cultural, and political motives. Central to this translatio was the problem of finding the correct order for organizing materials. Some encyclopedic writers followed a Plinian model which encouraged adducing ever more material without overmuch concern for contradiction; others preferred either the Platonic-Stoic or Aristotelian division of the disciplines; still others made the liberal arts their model; more analytic orders were also cultivated, as was, conversely, alphabetical order. Whatever order was adopted, though, compilation and the use of the commonplace book were generally the rule. Sites and genres of encyclopedic knowledge were as numerous as they were varied: from the book to the museum, from the miscellany to the theatrum.