Gottfried Zenner's spring, summer, autumn and winter Parnassus
Gottfried Zenner's spring, summer, autumn and winter Parnassus was a quarterly magazine published by Gottfried Zenner in the late 17th century, geared towards entertainment and enhancing newspaper news .
The title page of the first issue read:
- Gottfried Zenners, Altenb. | Spring Parnassus, | Or | Treatise of forty galant-learned curiosities, mostly after | current events. | All: | Four short stories or new and rare occurrences from the four parts of the world, | with pleasant reflections. | Eight gallant and short memoires or life mementos, as: Two people of state. Zwey | War heroes, and two learned people, from Europe and | other foreign empires, according to the alphabet, partly | this, partly another seculorum. | Six new particularities, the war and | Peace, religion, state or regiment, | literature, and finally the private class, commerce and action, or inventory for excellent arts concerning, with good observations | Eight odd themes or sentences from | many disciplines, with extensive discussions and explications. | Ten new curiosities, from so many sovereign ones | Rich Europens. with necessary comments. | Four new books in different ways, which are taken as grounds for discussion by many others, with | of all places of useful instruction in the scriptures [Line] | Franckfurt and Leipzig, | Published AUGUSTUS BOETIUS. | 1692.
Zenner's second magazine project of those years was published in six volumes from 1692 to 1696 by August Boetius in Gotha , the publishing locations Frankfurt and Leipzig note the presence at the fairs. The offer format is interesting for variety and a broad range of subjects: The starting point are news (novellas) that are put together in a mode that guarantees a colorful mix. There are four continents in each issue, and with it news from Europe as well as news from Asia, Africa and the Americas. In addition, as noted on the first title page, there are biographical skits on the same level as topics of historiography and news from a guaranteed spectrum of fields of knowledge between war and literature (in the sense of science). There are also credits with couriosities, i.e. h .: what appears to be newsworthy. Newspaper reports from the last quarter of the year open up under the continents, giving him space for learned and entertaining comments. Reading is geared towards variety. The biographies can come from kings or ancient authors; it is important to gain a starting point for a reflection that allows " curieuses " knowledge to intersperse on the topic. Technical inventions can gain such a reflection - for example the new equipment on English warships, which allow enemy ships to be shot at with grenades in bursts and which make boarding difficult.
Thanks to the preliminary decision for the four continents (Australia has not yet been discovered), the newspaper reports are specifically selected internationally. Views of East Asia are "curieuse" entertainment, the preface to the first number justifies the curiosity as a selection criterion. In contrast to Zenner's simultaneous short stories from the learned and curious world, the individual contributions do not have a cohesive narrative framework. As in contemporary newspaper reporting, you get the location with the news and then, after a few news items, you get a lengthy reasoning.