TY - JOUR
T1 - Linnaeus’ restless system
T2 - Translation as textual engineering in eighteenth-century botany
AU - DIETZ, Bettina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Taylor & Francis.
Copyright:
Copyright 2017 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/4/2
Y1 - 2016/4/2
N2 - In this essay, translations of Linnaeus’ Systema naturae into various European languages will be placed into the context of successively expanded editions of Linnaeus’ writings. The ambition and intention of most translators was not only to make the Systema naturae accessible for practical botanical use by a wider readership, but also to supplement and correct it, and thus to shape it. By recruiting more users, translations made a significant contribution to keeping the Systema up to date and thus maintaining its practical value for decades. The need to incorporate countless additions and corrections into an existing text, to document their provenance, to identify inconsistencies, and to refer to relevant observations, descriptions, and illustrations in the botanical literature all helped to develop and refine techniques of textual montage. This form of textual engineering, becoming increasingly complex with each translation cycle, shaped the external appearance of new editions of the Systema, and reflected the modular architecture of a botanical system designed for expansion.
AB - In this essay, translations of Linnaeus’ Systema naturae into various European languages will be placed into the context of successively expanded editions of Linnaeus’ writings. The ambition and intention of most translators was not only to make the Systema naturae accessible for practical botanical use by a wider readership, but also to supplement and correct it, and thus to shape it. By recruiting more users, translations made a significant contribution to keeping the Systema up to date and thus maintaining its practical value for decades. The need to incorporate countless additions and corrections into an existing text, to document their provenance, to identify inconsistencies, and to refer to relevant observations, descriptions, and illustrations in the botanical literature all helped to develop and refine techniques of textual montage. This form of textual engineering, becoming increasingly complex with each translation cycle, shaped the external appearance of new editions of the Systema, and reflected the modular architecture of a botanical system designed for expansion.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84904227743&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00033790.2014.929742
DO - 10.1080/00033790.2014.929742
M3 - Article
C2 - 27391666
AN - SCOPUS:84904227743
SN - 0003-3790
VL - 73
SP - 143
EP - 156
JO - Annals of Science
JF - Annals of Science
IS - 2
ER -