Autori
Brevaglieri, Sabina
Andretta, Elisa

Titolo
Storie naturali a Roma fra Antichi e Nuovi mondi. Il "Dioscorides" di Andrés Laguna (1555) e gli "Animalia Mexicana" di Johannes Faber (1628)
Periodico
Quaderni storici
Anno: 2013 - Volume: 142 - Fascicolo: 1 - Pagina iniziale: 43 - Pagina finale: 88

This essay offers a comparative analysis of two books that are, in many respects,exemplary cases of the making of natural history in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. These books are the commented translation of Dioscorides's Materia Medica,published in 1555 by the Spanish physician Andrés Laguna, and the AnimaliaMexicana, published in 1628 by the German physician Johannes Faber. In spite ofthe seventy years that lie between the two works and even though they have comeinto being in different ways, they have one fundamental thing in common: Rome astheir main setting. Starting from this evidence, the essay comparatively investigatesthe two books as «working sites», which means complex processes that took placeover a long period of time and were characterized by many spatial discontinuities.Furthermore, the analysis conceptualizes their making as communicative processes,where the act of writing and publication had specific, important roles. The essaylooks first at the paths of mobility and processes of circulation from which the booksoriginated and how the city of Rome and its different locations impacted on the livesand experience of the authors. Then, the different cartographies of Rome as the capitalof natural knowledge the two books propose are examined, paying utmost attentionto the diverse meanings attributed to the Roman experience, when put into writing.By investigating all the further moments in the making of these natural histories, theessay sheds light on the different spatial configurations the itineraries followed bythe books' many protagonists allow us to trace and their individual meanings. Withinthis framework, the books' publishing phases will finally emerge as communicativeand situated actions, that offer promising vantage points for analyzing the spacesand frameworks of reference as well as the diverse publics in relation to which theseworks were composed.



SICI: 0301-6307(2013)142:1<43:SNARFA>2.0.ZU;2-4
Testo completo: http://www.mulino.it/download/article/10.1408/73479
Testo completo alternativo: http://www.mulino.it/doi/10.1408/73479

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