Wikipedia

Polygraph (author)

This article is about an author that can write on a variety of different subjects. For the early 19th-century device used for duplication of writing, see Polygraph (duplicating device). For the modern forensic instrument, see Polygraph. For the automatic signing instrument, see Autopen.

A polygraph (from Ancient Greek: πολύς, poly = "many" and γράφειν, graphein = "to write") is an author who writes in a variety of fields.[1]

Portrait of French polygraph Denis Diderot (1767, Louis-Michel van Loo)

In literature, the term polygraph is often applied to certain writers of antiquity such as Aristotle, Plutarch, Varro, Cicero and Pliny the Elder. Polygraphs still existed in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but, other than writers of books for children, they have become rarer in modern times due to the specialisation of knowledge. Voltaire and Diderot are examples of modern polygraphs.

Polygraph writers

edit

Classical Antiquity

edit

Middle Ages

edit

Early modern period (1500-1800)

edit

Modern era (1800 onwards)

edit

Other usage

edit

The term can be used in a pejorative sense to mean a journalist who writes on many subjects but without expertise in any particular one. The composer Georg Telemann was considered, somewhat pejoratively, a polygraph by critics due to the vast number and variety of his musical compositions.

Notes

edit
  1. ^ "Definition of polygraph | Dictionary.com". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  2. ^ Richard Barrie Dobson. Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages: A-J (Editions du Cerf, 2000) p. 749
  3. ^ Richard Barrie Dobson. Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Volume 2 (Routledge, 2000) p. 49
 

This literature-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Polygraph_(author)&oldid=1187378034"