The thirteenth century saw such a proliferation of new encyclopedic texts that more than one scholar has called in 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' "Speculum Maius", Ramon Llull's "Arbor Scientiae" and Libre de meravelles, and Jean de Meun's "Continuation of the Roman de la Rose". Franklin-Brown analyzes the order of knowledge in these challenging texts; the diverse discourses that they absorb from preexisting classical, patristic, and medieval writing; and the ways in which the juxtaposition of those discourses alters their interplay. In doing so, she suggests revisions to our understanding of scholastic literary and intellectual practices, and a more nuanced view of medieval reading as an activity that involved evaluating, harmonizing, or even overlooking some passages in order to adjudicate meaning.
About the AuthorMary Franklin-Brown is assistant professor in the Department of French and Italian at the University of Minnesota.
Reviews"Mary Franklin-Brown has taken on the very difficult task of making the medieval encyclopedia accessible as literature and developed an original and very effective method for doing so. It has required the powers of a sophisticated literary critic together with an art historian's ability to interpret manuscript illustrations and a codicologist's understanding of the layout of the manuscript page. The result is a tour de force." (Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University)"
Book InformationISBN 9780226260686
Author Mary Franklin-BrownFormat Hardback
Page Count 424
Imprint University of Chicago PressPublisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 794g
Dimensions(mm) 24mm * 16mm * 4mm