The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and GermanyWhy did people argue about curiosity in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, so much more than today? Why was curiosity a fashionable topic in early modern conduct manuals, university dissertations, scientific treatises, sermons, newspapers, novellas, plays, operas, ballets, poems, from Corneille to Diderot, from Johann Valentin Andreae to Gottlieb Spizel? Universities, churches, and other institutions invoked curiosity in order to regulate knowledge or behaviour, to establish who should try to know or do what, and under what circumstances. As well as investigating a crucial episode in the history of knowledge, this study makes a distinctive contribution to historiographical debates about the nature of 'concepts'. Curiosity was constantly reshaped by the uses of it. And yet, strangely, however much people contested what curiosity was, they often agreed that what they were disagreeing about was one and the same thing. |
Common terms and phrases
Académie des Sciences Academy antiquarian argued Augustinian bad curiosity Bossuet Brandenburg-Prussia cabinet of curiosities called curiosity Camus Célinte Ceriziers Christian Thomasius church discourse claims collecting condemned connotation contemporary context Counter-Reformation culture of curiosities curieux curiositas Curiosität curiositez curiosity-collecting tendency curious objects Daston denoted described desire discourse on curiosity discursive tendencies dissertation doctrine early modern eighteenth century especially example exempla exemplarity exemplum explicitly Faculty family of terms female curiosity Fénelon France Frankfurt a.d. French Garasse genre German Helmstedt included institutions involved Jesuit JOHANN Kenny knowledge L'Espine language-game learned Leipzig Lutheran male meanings medicine metaphor miscellanies moral narrating narrative naturalist nature novella object-oriented occult passion pastoral Paullini period philosophy Pietist Pleix Plutarch polypragmosyne Pomian printed protagonists readers Rechenberg Scudéry secrets secular seventeenth century shape sometimes Spizel stories Stryk Stryk/Lüedecke 1743 texts theology thing tion title-page treatise vice Watson/Rose Whereas women writers
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