The World in a Box: The Story of an Eighteenth-Century Picture Encyclopedia - Softcover

Te Heesen, Anke

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226322874 ISBN 13: 9780226322872

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2002

Synopsis

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, glue them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments—the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with the creation and maintenance of an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares the Academy with other aspects of Enlightenment material culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by the Academy shaped both the developing middle class in Germany and Enlightenment thought. The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy's Academy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

About this title

About the Author

Anke te Heesen is a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She is coeditor of Sammeln als Wissen: Das Sammeln und seine wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Bedeutung.

From the Back Cover

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, paste them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments-the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with creating and maintaining an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares the Academy with other aspects of Enlightenment culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by the Academy shaped both Enlightenment thought and the developing middle class in Germany. The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy's Academy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

From the Inside Flap

This is a book about a box that contained the world. The box was the Picture Academy for the Young, a popular encyclopedia in pictures invented by preacher-turned-publisher Johann Siegmund Stoy in eighteenth-century Germany. Children were expected to cut out the pictures from the Academy, paste them onto cards, and arrange those cards in ordered compartments-the whole world filed in a box of images.

As Anke te Heesen demonstrates, Stoy and his world in a box epitomized the Enlightenment concern with creating and maintaining an appropriate moral, intellectual, and social order. The box, and its images from nature, myth, and biblical history, were intended to teach children how to collect, store, and order knowledge. te Heesen compares theAcademy with other aspects of Enlightenment culture, such as commercial warehouses and natural history cabinets, to show how the kinds of collecting and ordering practices taught by theAcademy shaped both Enlightenment thought and the developing middle class in Germany.The World in a Box, illustrated with a multitude of images of and from Stoy'sAcademy, offers a glimpse into a time when it was believed that knowledge could be contained and controlled.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226322874
• ISBN 13: 9780226322872
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 244