The Librarian's Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain

The Librarian's Atlas: The Shape of Knowledge in Early Modern Spain
by: Seth Kimmel (Author)
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication Date: 2024/5/6
Language: English
Print Length: 272 pages
ISBN-10: 0226833178
ISBN-13: 9780226833170
Book Description
A history of early modern libraries and the imperial desire for total knowledge.   Medieval scholars imagined the library as a microcosm of the world, but as novel early modern ways of managing information facilitated empire in both the New and Old Worlds, the world became a projection of the library. In The Librarian’s Atlas, Seth Kimmel offers a sweeping material history of how the desire to catalog books coincided in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aspiration to control territory. Through a careful study of library culture in Spain and Morocco—close readings of catalogs, marginalia, indexes, commentaries, and maps—Kimmel reveals how the booklover’s dream of a comprehensive and well-organized library shaped an expanded sense of the world itself.
About the Author
A history of early modern libraries and the imperial desire for total knowledge.   Medieval scholars imagined the library as a microcosm of the world, but as novel early modern ways of managing information facilitated empire in both the New and Old Worlds, the world became a projection of the library. In The Librarian’s Atlas, Seth Kimmel offers a sweeping material history of how the desire to catalog books coincided in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the aspiration to control territory. Through a careful study of library culture in Spain and Morocco—close readings of catalogs, marginalia, indexes, commentaries, and maps—Kimmel reveals how the booklover’s dream of a comprehensive and well-organized library shaped an expanded sense of the world itself. Read more