Confusing and annoying crowd of books: relations between the historical and informational context of modern Europe and the Bibliotheca Universalis of Conrad Gesner

Abstract

Printing Press had, as one of their most significant impacts, the vast, intense and accelerated production of bibliographies, as means of recording, organizing, selecting, availability and mediation of documents. One of the many consequences of Printing Press is the need to operate the so-called information explosion - a phenomenon investigated from an historical and cultural point of view by authors such as Peter Burke and Ann Blair. Based on this frame, this article seeks to establish relations between the historical and informational context of Modern Europe and the Bibliotheca Universalis, written by Conrad Gesner (16th century). The Bibliotheca enrolls aspects of manuscript and printed culture and implicitly brings a deep descriptive and semantic reflection on documents and knowledge, as evidenced in studies of Alfredo Serrai and Fiammetta Sabba. The "bibliographic gesture" of Gesner is more than just a response to the confusa et noxia illa librorum multitudo ("confusing and annoying crowd of books"), which in our days brings us to the meaning of the so-called information overload: it is the force that builds the very architecture of Bibliography as a discipline