The project PREME aims to explore and catalogue from the perspective of the history of knowledge all philosophical reviews published in between 1665 and 1789, spanning from the founding moment of the two first philosophical journals – Philosophical Transactions and Journal des Sçavans – to the French Revolution, which is usually considered a turning point marking the end of literary experimentation and, conversely, the beginning of intellectual specialization and mass communication. The database is based on the census of more than 1.500 different journals and more than 10.000 issues. Albeit the high number of studies and research projects on the academic and scientific journals, scarce, if not any, attention has been given to the role of reviews in shaping the Republic of Letters and in determining the cultural milieu and the circulation of knowledge across countries. This database exploits existing digitised resources: for French-language journals, Le gazetier universel covers1600-1789 (http://gazetier-universel.gazettes18e.fr/); for Italian, Periodici e riviste preunitarie encompasses 1668-1861, going beyond our end-date (http://www.internetculturale.it/it/41/collezioni-digitali/26180/periodici-e-riviste-preunitarie); for English, the main reference is Eighteenth Century Collections Online (https://www.gale.com/intl/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online); for German, the Gelehrte Journale und Zeitungen als Netzwerke des Wissens im Zeitalter der Aufklärung spans the end of seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth (https://gelehrte-journale.de/startseite/; http://idrz18.adw-goettingen.gwdg.de; http://ds.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/viewer/collections/zeitschriftenderaufklaerung/).
The database is under completion and the entries are constantly under revision.
If you want to contribute to the project adding a philosophical review, please fill this form.
PIs: Laura Anna Macor (Università degli Studi di Verona) and Marco Sgarbi (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia).
For any suggestion, please contact: lauraanna.macor@univr.it or marco.sgarbi@unive.it
