Ignotum per Ignotius or If Curiosity Killed the Cat: An Insight into the Wonders of Europe

Otilia Pacea (Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University of Bucharest, Romania) [BIO]

Email: otiliapacea@yahoo.co.uk

 

ABSTRACT:

Wunderkammern or cabinets of curiosities were becoming a fad in Europe at the turn of the 17th century. The wealthy and the well-connected were collecting all sorts of strange things and displayed them in special rooms, properly and specifically designed. Three hundred years later, it is but the same fad that is having a dramatically witty comeback in the birth of weblogs, the latest genre of electronic language. Web enthusiasts and enthusiasts of all kinds are now gathering information and display it for free, within a postmodern mambo jumbo of found virtual objects of desire. This paper explores paradigms of curiosity at the graphical and textual level by a comparative analysis of the most popular European /British or Irish vs. American blogs, over a span of seven years.