ABOUT THIS BOOK
The thirteenth century saw such a proliferation of new encyclopedic texts that more than one scholar has called it the “century of the encyclopedias.” Variously referred to as a speculum, thesaurus, or imago mundi—the term encyclopedia was not commonly applied to such books until the eighteenth century—these texts were organized in such a way that a reader could easily locate a collection of authoritative statements on any given topic. Because they reproduced, rather than simply summarized, parts of prior texts, these compilations became libraries in miniature.
In this groundbreaking study, Mary Franklin-Brown examines writings in Latin, Catalan, and French that are connected to the encyclopedic movement: Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum maius; Ramon Llull’s Libre de meravelles, Arbor scientiae, and Arbre de filosofia d’amor; and Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose. Franklin-Brown analyzes the order of knowledge in these challenging texts, describing the wide-ranging interests, the textual practices—including commentary, compilation, and organization—and the diverse discourses that they absorb from preexisting classical, patristic, and medieval writing. She also demonstrates how these encyclopedias, like libraries, became “heterotopias” of knowledge—spaces where many possible ways of knowing are juxtaposed.
But Franklin-Brown’s study will not appeal only to historians: she argues that a revised understanding of late medievalism makes it possible to discern a close connection between scholasticism and contemporary imaginative literature. She shows how encyclopedists employed the same practices of figuration, narrative, and citation as poets and romanciers, while much of the difficulty of the imaginative writing of this period derives from a juxtaposition of heterogeneous discourses inspired by encyclopedias.
With rich and innovative readings of texts both familiar and neglected, Reading the World reveals how the study of encyclopedism can illuminate both the intellectual work and the imaginative writing of the scholastic age.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgment
Explanatory Notes
Introduction - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0001
[wikipedia, encyclopaedia britannica, postmodern encyclopedism, encyclopedism, encyclopedism of western europe, scholastic]
This chapter presents a historical view of the encyclopedia, beginning with Wikipedia. Despite its reputation of being an unreliable source in comparison to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia exercises a peculiar fascination over readers. Because Wikipedia relies on the consensus of a multitude of contributors, there is no guarantee of both accuracy as well as the maintenance of consensus itself. The Introduction describes the similar and differing aspects of the pre- and postmodern encyclopedism. Wikipedia though certainly different from the encyclopedias of the modern period, presents a certain similarity to the encyclopedism of Western Europe during the period commonly known as scholastic (ca. 110–ca. 1400). This chapter presents a brief history of how encyclopedism came to be what it is today, and introduces the goal and tasks that the book aims to study. (pages 1 - 27)
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Part I. The Archive
The Book of the World - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0002
[Ramon Llull, libre de mervalles, libre de plasent visió, Anthony Bonner, llull's paradigm of encyclopedism]
Ramon Llull's Libre de mervalles (Paris, ca. 1288–89) is an odd text that joins the features of the encyclopedic genre with the quest of romance. This chapter mentions a more conventional encyclopedia, the Libre de plasent visió, where a rich passage describes the features and contents of the book with such spectacular beauty that it produces the effect of—as Anthony Bonner described it—novelistic invention. The chapter suggests an alternative way of reading the description of this encyclopedia—as Llull's paradigm of encyclopedism, in its epistemological foundation, its rhetorical practice, and its hermeneutics. The chapter aims to provide a general overview of the practices and materials of scholasticism, how statements on the subject were made, the known fields that accommodated them, and the archive that determined how those fields were related to one another. (pages 32 - 92)
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Part II. The Order of the Encyclopedia
Narrative and Natural History - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0003
[Vincent de Beauvais, speculum maius, Bartholomeus Anglicus, scriptural narrative, De Proprietatibus Rerum]
Vincent de Beauvais's compilation, Speculum maius is an erudite, useful, and infinitely fascinating anthology of knowledge in all disciplines. Working over several decades on this anthology, Beauvais was never able to complete it. This led to the continuous expansion of an apparently limitless encyclopedia. What resulted was a book of 3.24 million words that made it unappealing to scholars in favor of the more contained florilegium of Bartholomeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum. The Franciscan's encyclopedia, however, focused mainly on natural history, whereas Vincent's branched out into fields such as psychology, liberal and mechanical arts, political, ecclesiastical, and literary history. In essence, Vincent's compilation is the principal encyclopedia of its time. In dealing with the organization of it, Vincent settled on a paradigm borrowed from scriptural narrative. This chapter is devoted to the topic of his final organizational model. (pages 95 - 128)
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The Obscure Figures of the Encyclopedia - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0004
[Ramon Llull, llull's hermeneutics, encyclopedism, rhetorical inventio, lullian encyclopedic texts, visual exegesis, scriptural exegesis, exegetical tree]
This chapter looks again at Ramon Llull, and argues that Llull's hermeneutics and encyclopedism was shaped and molded by Llull's early apprenticeship in troubadour lyric. The chapter also examines exegetical figures, figures that are shown to be instruments of rhetorical inventio and therefore could also be perceived as common ground in the medieval alliance between rhetoric and hermeneutics. The chapter then investigates the appearance of figuration in Lullian encyclopedic texts—this helps in addressing how these many categories of figures coexist with, complement, or obscure each other within the space of the book. The chapter examines the different exegetical forms, including visual exegesis and scriptural exegesis. Particular in these figures is the exegetical tree, and how this figures into the aspect of the symbolic function of the tree of knowledge in a reading of the encyclopedia. (pages 129 - 181)
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The Order of Nature - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0005
[Jean de Meun, roman de la rose, project of translation, narrative of seduction, calque of french romance, neoplatonic writers, allegorical discourse]
This chapter examines the writings of Jean de Meun, a different sort of intellectual whose primary literary activity was translation of important Latin texts. The chapter peeks into one of his writings: his continuation of the Roman de la Rose (ca. 1269–78) that apparently caught the eye of the French court. Although the text itself is heavily invested in the project of translation, it seems to be held together by a narrative of seduction that constitutes a recognizable calque of French romance. The chapter leans into Jean's interweaving in the Roman de la Rose of a number of contemporary discourses—such as the discourse of lyric and romance, or the allegorical discourse of Neoplatonic writers. This continuation of Jean seems to constitute a certain encyclopedic character, as mentioned by critics of the Rose in the late nineteenth century—a continuation wherein the challenge of its organization seems to have dispensed critics' attention from it. (pages 182 - 214)
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Part III. Heterotopias
A Fissured Mirror - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0006
[shape of the encyclopedia, reading an encyclopedia, organizational structure, finding device, speculum maius, chain of associations]
This chapter questions the ordering principles that determine the shape of the encyclopedia. As a form of habit, we do not generally experience or think about the encyclopedia as a body with a beginning, an articulation of the parts, and an end. The process of reading an encyclopedia also entails a certain understanding of its organization—which is required in order for one to be able to navigate through these texts. This organizational structure, however, often plays the simple role of a finding device. As one reads an entry on the object of interest, the related topic cited in this first entry beckon one to return to the shelf and pick up another volume or two that contains the next set of information desired. This chapter, then, is an exploration of this mode of reading encyclopedias, tracing a path through the Speculum maius, an idiosyncratic journey guided by a chain of associations. (pages 221 - 261)
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The Phoenix in the Mirror - Mary Franklin-Brown
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226260709.003.0007
[Wolfgang Iser, reading scholastic encyclopedias, Jean de Meun, Ramon Llull, roman de la Rose, libre de meravalles, arbre de filosofia d'amor, mirror trope, mise en abyme]
Wolfgang Iser argues that the fragmentary nature of modern texts allows the reader a certain level of awareness over his or her own interpretive work and choices—which presents a different understanding of the way heterogeneity can shape a subject. This final chapter, however, is focused on the reflection of the experience of reading scholastic encyclopedias—an object itself of Jean de Meun's and Ramon Llull's reflections. Iser's insights are suggestive in that they divert us from thinking about the literary subject solely as expressed in the first person, and allow us to consider a second-person subject brought forth by the text. The chapter suggests, however, that these florilegia open up both first- and second-person subject positions. The second half of the chapter, meanwhile, is devoted to the texts: Roman de la Rose, the Libre de meravalles, and the Arbre de filosofia d'amor and their use of the mirror trope and the mise en abyme or the dramatization of mirror reflection. (pages 262 - 301)
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Afterword
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index of Names and Titles
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
