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| User: | commonplace_sam (12411869) |
(no userpics) |
| Name: | The Commonplace Blog | |
| Location: | Chicago, IL | |
| About: | Commonplace books emerged in the 15th century with the availability of cheap paper for writing, mainly in England. They were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books. They were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and humanists as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests. "Commonplace" is a translation of the Latin term locus communis which means "a theme or argument of general application", such as a statement of proverbial wisdom. In this original sense, commonplace books were collections of such sayings, such as Milton's commonplace book. Scholars have expanded this usage to include any manuscript that collects material along a common theme by an individual. Critically, many of these works are not seen to have literary value to modern editors. However, the value of such collections is the insights they offer into the tastes, interests, personalities and concerns of their individual compilers. Some modern writers see blogs as an analogy to commonplace books. -- Wikipedia A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories:" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his. -- Jonathan Swift, in A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet | |
| Maintainers: | 1: copperbadge | |
| Members: | 1: copperbadge | |
| Watched by: | 13: _fx, alexiel_neesan, altorogue, copperbadge, elisiande, flamingsword, kenazfiction, musicianatheart, oligomer, only_sound, ovrthinxit, rhapsody032590, sophie_spence | |
| Account type: | Basic Account | |
