Encyclopaedism from antiquity to the Renaissance

Description

"Shedding new light on the rich body of encyclopaedic writing surviving from the two millennia before the Enlightenment, this book 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. The focus is 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"--;Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Contributors -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- The boundaries of encyclopaedism -- Common ground -- Encyclopaedic variations -- Part I Classical encyclopaedism -- 2 Encyclopaedism in the Roman empire -- Encyclopaedism before Rome -- The classical bookworld -- Landmarks of encyclopaedism in the late republic and early empire -- Common features -- Single-subject works -- Miscellanies and exempla -- Late antiquity -- 3 Encyclopaedism in the Alexandrian library -- Introduction -- The politics of Alexandrian encyclopaedism -- Callimachus' Pinakes -- The homeric proto-encyclopaedia -- Lexicography -- Conclusion -- 4 Labores pro bono publico -- Introduction: nobis Quiritium solis -- sole authorship of an all-embracing work -- Labores pro bono publico I: ancestral exemplars, imperial imitators -- Labores pro bono publico II: the encyclopaedic mission -- Utilitas vitae: the life-enhancing nature of 'nature, that is, life' -- Ordering nature: roads through the wilderness -- Molem illam Historiae Naturalis: the encyclopaedist's cultural burden -- 5 Encyclopaedias of virtue? -- Introduction -- Ancient wisdom collections -- On system -- Comprehensiveness -- Authority -- Conclusion -- 6 Plutarch's corpus of quaestiones in the tradition of imperial Greek encyclopaedism -- Rethinking the ancient quaestio -- Plutarch's quaestiones in context: reading quaestiones-literature in the high empire -- Plutarch's quaestiones: content and intellectual outlook -- Selective reading: the Plutarchan quaestiones as reference works? -- Consecutive reading, and its subtexts -- Conclusion -- 7 Artemidorus' Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia -- Introduction -- Contemporary criticism of the encyclopaedia -- The infinite requirements of divination -- The Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia -- Effects on composition.;"Shedding new light on the rich body of encyclopaedic writing surviving from the two millennia before the Enlightenment, this book 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"-- Illustrations -- Abbreviations -- Contributors -- Preface -- 1 Introduction -- The boundaries of encyclopaedism -- Common ground -- Encyclopaedic variations -- Part I Classical encyclopaedism -- 2 Encyclopaedism in the Roman empire -- Encyclopaedism before Rome -- The classical bookworld -- Landmarks of encyclopaedism in the late republic and early empire -- Common features -- Single-subject works -- Miscellanies and exempla -- Late antiquity -- 3 Encyclopaedism in the Alexandrian library -- Introduction -- The politics of Alexandrian encyclopaedism -- Callimachus' Pinakes -- The homeric proto-encyclopaedia -- Lexicography -- Conclusion -- 4 Labores pro bono publico -- Introduction: nobis Quiritium solis -- sole authorship of an all-embracing work -- Labores pro bono publico I: ancestral exemplars, imperial imitators -- Labores pro bono publico II: the encyclopaedic mission -- Utilitas vitae: the life-enhancing nature of 'nature, that is, life' -- Ordering nature: roads through the wilderness -- Molem illam Historiae Naturalis: the encyclopaedist's cultural burden -- 5 Encyclopaedias of virtue? -- Introduction -- Ancient wisdom collections -- On system -- Comprehensiveness -- Authority -- Conclusion -- 6 Plutarch's corpus of quaestiones in the tradition of imperial Greek encyclopaedism -- Rethinking the ancient quaestio -- Plutarch's quaestiones in context: reading quaestiones-literature in the high empire -- Plutarch's quaestiones: content and intellectual outlook -- Selective reading: the Plutarchan quaestiones as reference works? -- Consecutive reading, and its subtexts -- Conclusion -- 7 Artemidorus' Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia -- Introduction -- Contemporary criticism of the encyclopaedia -- The infinite requirements of divination -- The Oneirocritica as fragmentary encyclopaedia -- Effects on composition. Artemidorus, ethnic identity and the Second Sophistic -- Conclusions -- 8 Encyclopaedias and autocracy -- Introduction -- The library of Tribonian -- Digest, structure and organisation -- Pandectae and education -- Encyclopaedism and power -- Encyclopaedism versus autocracy -- 9 Late Latin encyclopaedism -- Introduction -- Roman encyclopaedism and practical knowledge -- New texts, late antiquity -- Toward a new rhetoric of practical knowledge -- Part II Medieval encyclopaedism -- 10 Byzantine encyclopaedism of the ninth and tenth centuries -- 11 The imperial systematisation of the past in Constantinople -- Introduction -- The innovative methodology of the Constantinian Excerpts -- The production of the Constantinian Excerpts -- Number fifty-three -- Imperial sponsorship and the selection of subjects -- Selection of historiographers -- Conclusions -- 12 Ad maiorem Dei gloriam -- Introduction -- Joseph Rhakendytès -- A synopsis of Byzantine learning -- Ad maiorem Dei gloriam -- Conclusion -- 13 Shifting horizons -- Debates and definitions -- Isidore of Seville and the amphitheatre of life -- Hrabanus Maurus and mundus moralised -- Honorius Augustodunensis' Imago mundi: reflections of a post-Carolingian world -- Clerics and laypeople in a Franciscan image of the world -- An encyclopaedia for laity -- Conclusion -- 14 Isidore's Etymologies -- Introduction -- Etymology: on words and things -- Ordering the world: the structure(s) of the Etymologies -- Order in the curriculum -- Order in the wider world -- Order in the alphabet -- Memory -- Conclusion -- 15 Loose giblets -- Ordinatio, compilatio and late medieval encyclopaedism -- Reginald Pecock's encyclopaedic community -- 16 Why was the fourteenth century a century of Arabic encyclopaedism? -- In search of Arabic encyclopaedism -- Centres of knowledge and power -- The cleric and the clerk -- Conclusion. 17 Opening up a world of knowledge -- Introduction -- Encyclopaedic traditions -- Function and uses -- Tools for the reader in Mamluk encyclopaedias -- Accessibility for a wider audience -- Primary sources -- Part III Renaissance encyclopaedism -- 18 Revisiting Renaissance encyclopaedism -- The 'encyclopaedia' and encyclopaedism in the Renaissance -- Pliny's principle: 'no book so bad' -- The association of 'encyclopaedia' with encyclopaedism -- 19 Philosophy and the Renaissance encyclopaedia -- 20 Reading 'Pliny's ape' in the Renaissance -- The Polyhistor from antiquity to Renaissance -- Glossing the Polyhistor -- Editing the Polyhistor -- Conclusion -- 21 Shakespeare's encyclopaedias -- World orders -- Oral tradition, rhetorical resources -- The performance of knowledge -- 22 Big Dig -- English chorography -- Britannia redeemed -- 23 Irony and encyclopaedic writing before (and after) the Enlightenment -- Part IV Chinese encyclopaedism: a postscript -- 24 The passion to collect, select, and protect -- Introduction -- The Chinese learned world and the origins of leishu -- The first leishu -- Leishu in late imperial China -- The lesser-learned world and leishu -- Leishu and the 'High Qing' -- Leishu and the passion to collect, select, and protect: the ties that bind -- Note on sources -- Bibliography -- Index.