Paper museums: Collecting and consumerism in seventeenth-century prose (Francis Bacon, John Evelyn, Henry Oldenburg, Robert Hooke).
Contributors: University of Toronto (Canada).
Published: 2003
Language: eng
Number of pages: 231
Subjects: Literature, English.
Description: My thesis investigates the ways in which the impulse to possess the new and the unfamiliar found expression in seventeenth-century prose. Focusing on the critical relationship between the Scientific Revolution and early discourses of consumerism, I trace the connections between empirical forms of inquiry and the emerging taste for novelty. My major authors are Francis Bacon, John Evelyn, Henry Oldenburg, and Robert Hooke. I argue that, in the seventeenth century, the model of the museum was translated into a variety of textual forms, literary and nonliterary; these include herbaria, epistolary networks, periodicals, and natural history writings. Examining the methods by which individuals and institutions ascribe meanings to objects, I situate the works of my authors within the broader contexts of consumerism, material culture, and the history of science. My research illuminates the critical function of seventeenth-century encyclopedic texts in linking collecting with other early modern discourses of control.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-04, Section: A, page: 1269.

Adviser: A. H. de Quehen.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Toronto (Canada), 2003.

School code: 0779.