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PUBL-Publisering/prosjektinform

Funding for copyediting of English-speaking monograph

Awarded: NOK 41,976

Conceptualizing Knowledge will answer the fundamental question of how knowledge was conceptualized in early modern Norway. By investigating 51 individual manuscripts commonly called Black Books in the period 1700-1850, the core questions addressed in this study are: How did people in early modern Norway understand the concept of knowledge? What was knowledge understood to comprise? How did they authorize knowledge in order to legitimize it? Black Books were manuscripts manufactured as proper books with titles, introductions, prefaces, paragraph headings, and tables of content. The books contained useful knowledge for everyday living and included advice and recipes on topics such as sickness in humans and livestock, hunting, battles, games and trials, how to prepare domestic articles, and how to protect the household against witches and bewitchment. As such, the books represent a unique entry to the study of the circulation, interpretation, and application of knowledge in Norway in the early modern period. The manuscripts reveal the ideological framework from which the knowledge was interpreted and show how the writers related to and applied European literate products from genres like medicine, natural philosophy, popular magic, and practical how-to-books. This study demonstrates that: - black books were not merely domestic manuscripts but manufactured and composed as printed books by their makers, and conceived and treated as literary works by their users; - while eighteenth century intellectuals rendered magical ideas and practices as belonging to the common people, knowledge of magic was considered as art across a much broader social and cultural strata of the Norwegian population; - contrary to the uniform model of progress provided by enlightened ideas in this period, the conceptions of knowledge reflected in the black books show a retrospective view resting upon ideas and values belonging to past centuries

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PUBL-Publisering/prosjektinform

Thematic Areas and Topics

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