Skilled to Read the Book of Nature: Literacy Education in Physico-Theological Youth Literature from England and the Dutch Republic

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperOther research output

Abstract

In the second half of the eighteenth century, youth literature increasingly articulated the physico-theological idea that nature was the main source of religious knowledge, because everything – from God to earthy worms – was linked to each other in a great chain of being. According to this physico-theological world view, God’s Book of Nature could solely be read by people who connect total overviews and detailed observations, and who manage their knowledge in a consistent system. How did youth literature teach youngsters to understand, observe and structure their world in such a way? As I will demonstrate, youth literature became a tool for training these vital skills: reading physico-theological youth literature was in itself an instrument to observe the world in detail and in overview, to zoom in and zoom out, and to organize observations and knowledge. In this way, physico-theological youth literature challenged the gap between media literacies and practical skills: young readers were invited to develop their skills to read books of paper and thus the book of nature itself.
In this paper, I will particularly focus on an interconnected collection of Dutch and English physico-theological texts for youngsters, published by and around the publisher’s house of Joseph Johnson in London. Johnson published translations of Dutch physico-theological books (such as De Cambon’s youth novel The Little Grandisson and Martinet’s handbook The Small Catechism of Nature) and English books which were translated to the Dutch (such as Barbauld’s Hymnes in Prose for Children). In a comparative analysis, I will reveal the strategies translators and adapters used to transfer the physico-theological literacies education from the original books to their own new public. Were English and Dutch young readers encouraged to develop the same literacy skills in the same way? Or did these both youthful and lettered societies show significant differences in their literacy training for youngsters?

Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jun 2015
EventKnowledgeable Youngsters. Youth, Media and Early Modern Knowledge Societies - University Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands
Duration: 26 Jun 201527 Jun 2015

Conference

ConferenceKnowledgeable Youngsters. Youth, Media and Early Modern Knowledge Societies
Country/TerritoryNetherlands
CityUtrecht
Period26/06/1527/06/15

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Skilled to Read the Book of Nature: Literacy Education in Physico-Theological Youth Literature from England and the Dutch Republic'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this