Enlistment: lists in medieval and early modern literature

Uittreksel

"Bestiaries. Lapidaries. Lunaries. Inventories and household vocabularies. Lists are everywhere in medieval and early modern texts––evidence of the need to manage and order knowledge and experience. Yet until now, listing as a formal practice has received scant scholarly attention. In Enlistment, foremost medievalists and early modernists from both the Anglo-American and German traditions investigate the humble list as a platform for better understanding how and why lists captivated period audiences. From epic catalogues of trees in Geoffrey Chaucer and Edmund Spenser to genealogies and the names of the divine, the lists in question come from a variety of periods, languages, and genres. Throughout, contributors demonstrate how lists have the curious capacity to challenge our categories of thinking and ordering of the world. The lists we encounter in medieval and early modern literature can thus be seen as seismographs of cultural knowledge and also as testing grounds for defining the ineffable, or unfathomable, or that which would be dangerous if otherwise expressed."-- Provided by publisher.

Inhoud

Introduction: Enlistment as poetic stratagem / Eva von Contzen and James Simpson -- "He should not overlook anything that could ever be of significance": knowledge and vocabulary in Gerefa / Alexis Kellner Becker -- In the space of a list-Widsith's global modernism / Andrew James Johnston -- Listing divine names: a study in liturgical form / Kathryn Mogk Wagner -- Naming the children of Jacob: the shape of negative theology in the Benjamin Minor / Suzanne Conklin Akbari -- Out of Eden and back again: following the flow of concepts, categories, and lists in the four rivers of Paradise / Martha Rust -- Epic lists: the matter of Troy and the catalogue form in Middle English literature / Eva von Contzen -- Performing generic exhaustion: implosive households in Gavin Douglas's Palice of Honour / Wolfram R. Keller -- The epic tree catalogue from Chaucer to Spenser / Ingo Berensmeyer -- What's in a list? Erasmus, Cromwell, Bale / Alex Davis -- Reformation lists: syntax, the sacred, and the production of junk / James Simpson.