Paper museums: Collecting and consumerism in seventeenth -century prose

摘要

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.