World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Alain Schnapp with Lothar von Falkenhausen, Peter N. Miller, and Tim Murray. Los Angeles, la: Getty Research Institute, 2013. ISBN 978-1-60606-148-0

Citation

Williams KJ (2016) World Antiquarianism: Comparative Perspectives. Edited by Alain Schnapp with Lothar von Falkenhausen, Peter N. Miller, and Tim Murray. Los Angeles, la: Getty Research Institute, 2013. ISBN 978-1-60606-148-0. Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 1 (1), pp. 107-111. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00101005

Abstract
First paragraph: The study of antiquarianism has flourished in the past two decades, growing progressively more ambitious and sweeping in its scope. From period-specific national surveys, such as Graham Parry’s work on seventeenth-century English antiquaries, and investigations of individual scholars, such as Peter Miller’s study of the Provençal antiquary Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, historians of antiquarianism have panned out to interrogate the historiography underlying their own work, the longue durée of antiquarian practices, and the potential applicability of ‘antiquarianism’ as a concept in non-western contexts. This has been led by Peter Miller and Alain Schnapp, both of whom played editorial roles in the production of the present volume. Schnapp’s 1993 Conquête du passé (translated into English as The Discovery of the Past in 1997) was a revolutionary new look at forms of archaeological practice from the ancient Near East to the nineteenth century, and provided a framework within which to reappraise positively many forms of antiquarian activity dismissed previously as outmoded or amateurish. Subsequently, Peter Miller has edited two seminal collections of essays: the first, Momigliano and Antiquarianism (2007), reflecting on the scholarship of Arnaldo Momigliano, grandfather of the discipline; the second, Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500–1800 (2012, co-edited with François Louis), developing a comparative approach to antiquarian practices in the two cultures.

Notes
Output Type: Book Review

Journal
Erudition and the Republic of Letters: Volume 1, Issue 1