'Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts' presents the proceedings of the second COMERS congress, the successor to 'Centres of Learning' (Brill, 1995). Like its predecessor it contains in ancient, medieval and renaissance Europe and the Near East. Although the genre of encyclopaedia was defined and named only in modern times, texts that aspire to the encyclopaedic ideals of utility and comprehensiveness are found throughout recorded history. They respond to and shape ideas about the natural world, human history, and the nature and limits of human knowledge. The present volume comprises five extended essays on the problems and opportunities facing researchers into encyclopaedic texts, and 21 research papers on specific topics. It will be of interest to a general university audience as an interdisciplinary project, as well as to specialists in the various disciplines covered.
Author(s): Peter Binkley (ed.)
Series: Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, 79
Publisher: Brill
Year: 1997
Language: English
Pages: 456
City: Leiden
Acknowledgements ix
Notes on Contributors xi
Abbreviations xiii
Preface xv
ENCYCLOPAEDIA: DEFINITIONS AND THEORETICAL QUESTIONS
Robert L. Fowler / Encyclopaedias: Definitions and Theoretical Problems 3
E. C. Ronquist / Patient and Impatient Encyclopaedism 31
Bernard Ribémont / On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre in the Middle Ages 47
Margriet Hoogvliet / 'Mappae mundi' and Medieval Encyclopaedias: Image versus Text 63
Peter Binkley / Preachers' Responses to Thirteenth-Century Encyclopaedism 75
Brian W. Ogilvie / Encyclopaedism in Renaissance Botany: From 'historia' to 'pinax' 89
ORGANISATION OF KNOWLEDGE
Christel Meier / Organisation of Knowledge and Encyclopaedic 'ordo': Functions and Purposes of a Universal Literary Genre 103
Catherine Rubincam / The Organisation of Material in Graeco-Roman World Histories 127
Hilary Kilpatrick / Cosmic Correspondences: Songs as a Starting Point for an Encyclopaedic Portrayal of Culture 137
Kimberly Rivers / Memory, Division, and the Organisation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages 147
Maaike van Berkel / The Attitude towards Knowledge in Mamluk Egypt: Organisation and Structure of the 'Subh al-a'sha' by al-Qalqashandi (1355-1418) 159
Jan R. Veenstra / Cataloguing Superstition: A Paradigmatic Shift in the Art of Knowing the Future 169
EPISTEMOLOGY OF ENCYCLOPAEDIC KNOWLEDGE
John North / Encyclopaedias and the Art of Knowing Everything 183
Wout Jac. van Bekkum / Sailing on the Sea of Talmud: the Encyclopaedic Code of Early Jewish Exegesis 201
Bert Roest / Compilation as Theme and Praxis in Franciscan Universal Chronicles 213
Guy Guldentops / Henry Bate's Encyclopaedism 227
CULTURAL AND POLITICAL USES
Geert Jan van Gelder / Compleat Men, Women and Books: On Medieval Arabic Encyclopaedism 241
Frank Trombley / The Taktika of Nikephoros Ouranos and Military Encyclopaedism 261
G. J. Reinink / Communal Identity and the Systematisation of Knowledge in the Syriac 'Cause of all Causes' 275
E. L. Saak / The Limits of Knowledge: Hélinand de Froidmont's 'Chronicon' 289
William Ν. West / Public Knowledge at Private Parties: Vives, Jonson, and the Circulation of the Circle of Knowledge 303
Vincent C. Renstrom / Censoring Encyclopaedic Knowledge: The Case of Sahagun and Sixteenth-Century Spanish America 315
RECEPTION AND TRANSMISSION OF TEXTS
Michael W. Twomey / Towards a Reception History of Western Medieval Encyclopaedias in England Before 1500 329
William Schipper / The Earliest Manuscripts of Rabanus Maurus' 'De rerum naturis' (Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, MS Aug. 68 and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek MS 121) 363
John B. Friedman / Albert the Great's Topoi of Direct Observation and his Debt to Thomas of Cantimpré 379
Juris G. Lidaka / Bartholomaeus Anglicus in the Thirteenth Century 393
Ulrich Marzolph / Medieval Knowledge in Modern Reading: A Fifteenth-Century Arabic Encyclopaedia of 'omni re scibili' 407
Index 421
