Serbian Encyclopaedism in Serbia

Abstract

The development of the majority of encyclopaedic lexicography in the Serbian language is presented in this article. Also, it is represented that the Encyclopaedia (1818) is relevant to researchers of Serbian philosophy, not encyclopaedists. According to Dejan Vukićevićʼs bibliography of encyclopaedias and lexicons until the start of the second decade of the 20th century, more than 1500 units have been published on the territory of the contemporary Republic of Serbia, mostly in Cyrillic alphabet. His bibliography is also checked on examples of works dealing with religion. Since the end of the 20th century, Serbian encyclopaedic production, which had been underdeveloped until that time, has recorded a great growth. At the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, it reached the peak and later kept continuity on a lower level, but still higher than at the end of the 20th century. With the use of the Virtual Library of Serbia, attention is also drawn to some aspects of the encyclopaedic practice and it is pointed out that this activity, unlike linguistic lexicography, has not yet been accompanied by appropriate metalexicography. The article also deals with some principle questions on encyclopaedic and bibliographic works.