Defining Nature in the Renaissance World and Sex in the Lexicographer’s Workshop

This study considers the development of the "nature" entry in the dictionaries of the printer Robert Estienne (1531–1549) with the aim of clarifying the meanings of the term in the Renaissance. Defined as genitals in the first edition of the Dictionarium Latinogallicum, nature becomes in the following edition the “creator of all things.” The back-and-forth between these two Renaissance visions of nature brings to light a term whose meaning moves constantly between the concrete and the abstract.