Universal history (1745)

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The Universal history of arts and sciences was an encyclopedia by Dennis de Coetlogon . It appeared from 1741 to 1745, later a second edition from an unknown publisher was added. The work was unusually polemical and, with its relatively long articles, may have influenced the Encyclopaedia Britannica .

Author and publication history

Little is known about the author Dennis de Coetlogon. According to encyclopedia researcher Jeff Loveland, the author of Universal history may have been an impostor who had adopted a new name. The youthful De Coetlogon was allegedly an aristocratic soldier, part of the French elite and present at major events, who had also visited America. He was possibly born in 1685, he died in 1749.

The Universal history was published from April 1741 to June 1745 in 209 weekly deliveries. The publisher was John Hart, the work ultimately cost five pounds, four shillings and six pence, which was the monthly income of a printer or tailor.

De Coetlogon's work received little review and little citation. After De Coetlogon's death, and after his royal privilege had expired , a stranger published a New universal history of arts and sciences in 1759 . This was, so to speak, a second, shortened edition. The foreword and a few treatises had been exchanged, and socially inappropriate opinions were removed from the content. There were fewer theological topics, less French-related content and no more Catholic theological content.

content

De Coetlogon treated the mechanical arts superficially and the sciences and liberal arts more extensively. It also offered a significant amount of biographical, geographical and historical information, which was unusual for a dictionnaire des arts et des sciences . A fifth of the 169 treatises (essays; in the sense of longer articles) dealt with religion. At that time, theology was also seen as part of the sciences. Probably because of this spread of topics, De Coetlogon did not call the work lexicon or dictionary .

As can often be seen in encyclopedias of the 18th century, the work began more ambitiously than it ended. A third of the articles in Universal history belong to the letters A through C, and towards the end it was more impatient and carelessly written than at the beginning. It was also not unusual that De Coetlogon made extensive use of the content of earlier works, that is, he plagiarized them.

As a downright quack , De Coetlogon praised himself as an excellent doctor at the end of the article on Surgery . In several articles he praised his own medicine. Depending on the item, it was good for different diseases. Such advertising was not exactly unusual in encyclopedias in the 18th century. De Coetlogon went beyond what was then accepted.

Long articles were typical of universal history , many of which, however, had the character of lists. Nine treatises had more than fifty pages each. The shortest article, Cosmography , was fourteen lines. There were many cross-references that, while accurate, referred to other articles. In the end, however, they were not very useful, as they only ever referred to entire articles, not specific parts of them. De Coetlogon was not the first encyclopedist to index , but more carefully than previous ones and those in the decades to come. Overall, summarizes Jeff Loveland, the work was both ingenious and randomly organized.

Jeff Loveland suspects that William Smellie was influenced by Universal history . The author of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica also included longer articles in it. The purpose of De Coetlogon and Smellie is that they wanted to educate the reader; they should not be satisfied with looking up quickly.

Alignment

De Coetlogon shows a clearly elitist attitude; in the work he repeatedly expresses himself condescendingly about craftsmen, servants and other members of the lower classes. He may have imagined a higher readership and therefore described princely topics such as falconry . However, De Coetlogon complains about the treatment of the poor and specifically, for example, that the church charges a funeral fee and the bakers charge such high prices.

What was unusual about Universal history was its Catholic author in Protestant England, a country where Catholicism was illegal. De Coetlogon, however, showed himself to be a little orthodox, but rather an ecumenical Catholic. He even calls for tolerance for Jews and Quakers , to a certain extent for all religions. He calls the English Jews decent, very good subjects. He makes fun of Protestants because of their anti-Catholic attitude, and criticizes the Vatican as corrupt. Anyone telling ghost stories, De Coetlogon said, should be severely punished.

In the article Government , the author advocates a limited monarchy. He rejects both the despotism and modern republicanism of Oliver Cromwell . He also protests against the claim that Louis XIV restricted freedom in France. De Coetlogon supported Jacobiteism , the striving for the re-establishment of a Catholic monarchy, but only to the extent that De Coetlogon did not endanger his freedom in England.

The Universal history was swimming against the current in the society in which she appeared, she put the established order and its institutions in question. That was unusual for an encyclopedia, and seen in this way one can best compare it with the great French encyclopédie by Denis Diderot and his co-authors. While Diderot was critical of religion and politically radical, De Coetlogon advocated Catholic ecumenism with a hierarchical, traditional social order.

literature

  • Jeff Loveland: An Alternative Encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010.

supporting documents

  1. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 20-24, p. 46.
  2. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 51.
  3. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 78/79.
  4. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 9/10.
  5. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 87-89.
  6. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 155/156, p. 159.
  7. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 217.
  8. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 135/136, p. 152.
  9. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 138/139.
  10. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 213.
  11. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 74-76.
  12. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, p. 151.
  13. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 193-197.
  14. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 204/205.
  15. Jeff Loveland: An Alternative encyclopedia? Dennis de Coetlogon's Universal history of arts and sciences (1745) . Voltaire Foundation, Oxford 2010, pp. 206-209.