La Enciclopedia: un género textual perenne en hábitats cambiantes

Reflexiones sobre el documento fundacional, los manuales argentinos y las enciclopedias virtuales de mayor difusión en español

Abstract

I invite the reader to have a diachronic overview about the encyclopedias which performed a role in our education throughout two and half centuries: the French Encyclopedia from the 18th century; the traditional handbooks using the encyclopedia textual genre (in the case of Argentina); and two encyclopedias considered historical landmarks in digital documents – Encarta and Wikipedia. The common threads – continuities and transformations in their textual structures and the approach to some sensitive issues – have been chosen so as to propose a contextual reflection. Thus, I aimed at interpreting some relationships between the textual structures which, in my understanding, characterise the different encyclopedias, as well as the references to the scholar knowledge explicitly and implicitly presented by them and the knowledge approaches disseminated. I propose this analysis from the diachronic perspective in order to suggest comparisons between the texts and the respective times and circumstances in their production and dissemination. To illustrate the analysis, I chose a theme which is relevant for the research about textbooks – the indigenous peoples.