The Helsinki Society for Historical Lexicography organises a hybrid seminar on Friday, 29 November from 16:30 to 17:30 pm EET. The event will take place at the University of Helsinki (Main building, room: U4075) and online (please register to receive the Zoom link).
Linn Holmberg: The Dictionary Craze in Enlightenment Europe, 1665–1789
Linn Holmberg is an associate professor of History of Ideas at Stockholm university and a Pro
Futura Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (2020–2025). She is the author of The
Maurists’ Unfinished Encyclopedia (Voltaire Foundation, 2017), and co-editor with Maria Simonson of
Stranded Encyclopedias, 1700–2000: Exploring Unfinished, Unpublished, Unsuccessful Encyclopedic Projects
(Palgrave McMillan, 2021).
Abstract:
Among historians of lexicography and encyclopedism it is well-known that dictionaries of
languages and subjects multiplied greatly on European book markets in the eighteenth century. By
offering searchability and easy access to textual contents, dictionaries became one of the most
popular – and controversial – factual genres of the Enlightenment period. But how did
contemporaries interpret and react to this phenomenon?
In her ongoing book project, Linn Holmberg examines the reception and cultural impact of
the dictionary’s rise to popularity in sixteen learned journals and literary magazines in five countries
(France, the Dutch Republic, Germany, England, and Sweden) between 1665 and 1789. When did
dictionaries first emerge as a genre in need of discussion in the periodical press? How did review
journals contribute to defining and shaping the dictionary as a genre, and what was their role in
stimulating the cultural obsession that contemporaries came to refer to as the ‘dictionary craze’?
What transnational and national patterns can be distinguished in this process, and how can we
understand the enthusiasm and worries that dictionaries raised about knowledge and learning?
In her talk, Holmberg will address these and other questions that have emerged during her
five-year research project devoted to the dictionary genre’s ‘big break’ in Europe.
Everybody is welcome!