Pliny's Encyclopedia
The Reception of the Natural History

This book examines responses to Pliny the Elder's encyclopedic Natural History over the last two millennia.

Aude Doody (Author)

9780521491037, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 February 2010

204 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 1.5 cm, 0.47 kg

The Elder Pliny's Natural History is one of the largest and most extraordinary works to survive from antiquity. It has often been referred to as an encyclopedia, usually without full awareness of what such a characterisation implies. In this book, Dr Doody examines this concept and its applicability to the work, paying far more attention than ever before to the varying ways in which it has been read during the last two thousand years, especially by Francis Bacon and Denis Diderot. This book makes a major contribution not just to the study of the Elder Pliny but to our understanding of the cultural processes of ordering knowledge widespread in the Roman Empire and to the reception of classical literature and ideas.

Introduction. How to read an encyclopedia
1. Science and encyclopedism: the originality of the Natural History
2. Diderot's Pliny and the politics of the encyclopedia
3. Finding facts: the Summarium in the early printed editions
4. Specialist readings: art and medicine from the Natural History
Conclusion. Changing approaches to Pliny's Natural History
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], History of ideas [JFCX], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]