Encyclopaedism from Antiquity to the Renaissance

Sheds new light on the rich body of encyclopaedic writing surviving from the two millennia before the Enlightenment.

Jason König (Edited by), Greg Woolf (Edited by)

9781107038233, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 October 2013

615 pages, 3 b/w illus. 1 table
25.3 x 18 x 3.1 cm, 1.38 kg

'… this volume can be used in two different ways: each article can be read separately (I think it will be its main use), but the whole reading is stimulating. The interest of this book is to remind us that the theme of encyclopaedism, apparently limited to a technical genre, is not of small importance: it enables us to think about intertextuality, visions of the world or relations between power and knowledge.' Jacques Elfassi, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

There is a rich body of encyclopaedic writing which survives from the two millennia before the Enlightenment. This book sheds new light on that material. It traces the development of traditions of knowledge ordering which stretched back to Pliny and Varro and others in the classical world. It works with a broad concept of encyclopaedism, resisting the idea that there was any clear pre-modern genre of the 'encyclopaedia', and showing instead how the rhetoric and techniques of comprehensive compilation left their mark on a surprising range of texts. In the process it draws attention to both remarkable similarities and striking differences between conventions of encyclopaedic compilation in different periods, with a focus primarily on European/Mediterranean culture. The book covers classical, medieval (including Byzantine and Arabic) and Renaissance culture in turn, and combines chapters which survey whole periods with others focused closely on individual texts as case studies.

1. Introduction: Jason König and Greg Woolf
Part I. Classical Encyclopaedism: 2. Encyclopaedism in the Roman Empire Jason König and Greg Woolf
3. Encyclopaedism in the Alexandrian Library Myrto Hatzimichali
4. Labores pro bono publico: the burdensome mission of Pliny's Natural History Mary Beagon
5. Encyclopaedias of virtue? Collections of sayings and stories about wise men in Greek Teresa Morgan
6. Plutarch's corpus of Quaestiones in the tradition of imperial Greek encyclopaedism Katerina Oikonomopoulou
7. Artemidorus' Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia Daniel Harris-McCoy
8. Encyclopaedias and autocracy: Justinian's Encyclopaedia of Roman law Jill Harries
9. Late Latin encyclopaedism: towards a new paradigm of practical knowledge Marco Formisano
Part II. Medieval Encyclopaedism: 10. Byzantine encyclopaedism of the ninth and tenth centuries Paul Magdalino
11. The imperial systematisation of the past in Constantinople: Constantine VII and his Historical Excerpts András Németh
12. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam: Joseph Rhakendytès' synopsis of Byzantine learning Erika Gielen
13. Shifting horizons: the medieval compilation of knowledge as mirror of a changing world Elizabeth Keen
14. Isidore's Etymologies: on words and things Andrew Merrills
15. Loose Giblets: encyclopaedic sensibilities of ordinatio and compilatio in later medieval English literary culture and the sad case of Reginald Pecock Ian Johnson
16. Why was the fourteenth century a century of Arabic encyclopaedism? Elias Muhanna
17. Opening up a world of knowledge: Mamluk encyclopaedias and their readers Maaike van Berkel
Part III. Renaissance Encyclopaedism: 18. Revisiting Renaissance encyclopaedism Ann Blair
19. Philosophy and the Renaissance encyclopaedia: some observations D. C. Andersson
20. Reading 'Pliny's Ape' in the Renaissance: the Polyhistor of Caius Julius Solinus in the first century of print Paul Dover
21. Shakespeare's encyclopaedias Neil Rhodes
22. Big Dig: Dugdale's drainage and the dregs of England History of Embanking and Drayning Claire Preston
23. Irony and encyclopedic writing before (and after) the Enlightenment William West
Part IV. Chinese Encyclopaedism: A Postscript: 24. The passion to collect, select, and protect: fifteen hundred years of the Chinese encyclopaedia Harriet Zurndorfer.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA], Literature: history & criticism [DS], Literature & literary studies [D]