Monthly meetings with a few good friends
The Monthly Conversations of Some Good Friends are a scientific journal with a historical focus published by Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel between 1689 and 1698 .
The full title is:
“Monthly / Conversations / Some / Good Friends / From / All kinds of books and other / similar stories; / To all lovers / Of curiosities / On / Productivity and reflection / given out / From / AB / JANUARIUS 1689 / Sine censura & approbatione Actoris. / [Ornament-Line] / In laying Johann Christian Laurer's book / dealer / M DC LXXXIX. "
A second edition of the first volume was published by Laurer in Thorn and Johann Friedrich Gleditsch in Leipzig in 1690 ; the individual volumes each contained 12 numbers with a regular volume of 160 octave pages. 18 subsequent volumes were published by 1698. The journal was continued with the Curieusen Bibliothec, or, continuation of the Monthly Discussions 1704–1706.
Design and content
In the tradition of ancient philosophical dialogues, Tentzel set up his journal as a conversation. If necessary, however, there is a narrative voice, like in a novel, about the two protagonists Leonhard and Antonio, who meet at the beginning in Leonhard's library and there, as agreed, discuss books with the aim of having their conversations published in print. Transitions from the report to the dialogue to verbatim speech are fluid and imperceptible. In the text itself there are no headings to the reviewed books. The subjects change imperceptibly, a register allows individual topics to be accessed at the end of the year. The European journal market is in the background of the project:
"Because because so much learned men in Latin, German, French, English and Italian, other writings and inventions censor and recensit, who do not care whether loose mouths rub their grippy teeth against them, they hoped such stately examples would be a disapproval." easy to bring to better thoughts. "
Tentzel justified the dialogical form in the preface to January 1690 with which the second year opened. He had received criticisms from various quarters, which, however, passed him by personally.
“They wanted to know a lot about my names, and some who followed the common reputation even expressed them in their writings and letters. But you have done me no service because I do not recognize the conversations before my work, and therefore do not want to be obliged to discuss them under my name, or to give questions and answers [...] Because I easily saw beforehand, that it would be a useful thing to put a public censorship on new books, if it is done with piqvant and penetrating words. [... I] hoped, with the words Sine Censura & approbatione Auctoris [without evaluation and approval of the author], standing in each month, to adequately indicate to the learned world that, like the history dealt with therein and given grades, not so well after my own as other people's opinions and affection, so they should also be judged and understood accordingly. "
The judgments of his protagonists are thus in the room as possible public ones, from which he wants to distance himself at will.
The registers are interestingly divided into three parts: “The books whose content is told”, “The scribes, of which only a judgment is made or something remarkable is told” and thirdly one of the “most noble things and stories”. That corresponds to the content: Individual titles are presented intensively, but a lot of judgments are made and stories are told in digressions.