Nature, Virtue, and the Boundaries of Encyclopaedic Knowledge
The Tropological Universe of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217)
By (author) Tomas Zahora
Through analogy, vivid imagery, and constant recourse to ethics, Neckam’s encyclopedias aim to educate their readers until they leave the text behind and engage in a reading of the world in a quest for knowledge, experiencing not only its pleasure and beauty, but also its inherent power.
Can – and should – an encyclopedia be a repository of all knowledge? Does the idea of total encyclopedic knowledge constitute a boon for readers, or is it a labyrinthine nightmare? This book explores the pleasures and paradoxes of encyclopedism, viewed through the interpretative lenses of the works of Alexander Neckam (1157-1217), an English Augustinian canon and scholar. Neckam wrote not just one but two encyclopedias: the prose De naturis rerum (‘On the natures of things’) and the verse Laus sapientie divine (‘Praise of divine wisdom’). Poised between the end of the ‘renaissance’ of the twelfth century and the scholasticism-inspired thirteenth century, Neckam invites us into an unfamiliar universe in which encyclopedias are intentionally incomplete, and in which warnings about the vanity of knowledge coexist with vivid descriptions of new technological inventions. This strange union is facilitated by the exegetical method of tropology or moral reading. Through analogy, vivid imagery, and constant recourse to ethics, Neckam’s encyclopedias aim to educate their readers until they leave the text behind and engage in a reading of the world in a quest for knowledge, experiencing not only its pleasure and beauty, but also its inherent power.
- By (author) Tomas Zahora
Other Titles in this Series
Witchcraft, Superstition, and Observant Franciscan Preachers
Pastoral Approach and Intellectual Debate in Renaissance Milan
Volume 18
Communities of Learning
Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100-1500
Volume 9
Confraternity, Mendicant Orders, and Salvation in the Middle Ages
The Contribution of the Hungarian Sources (c.1270-c.1530)
Volume 23
The Sacred and the Secular in Renaissance Florence
Vallombrosan Exorcisms and the Rise of Observant Mendicancy
Volume 31
Orthodoxy and Controversy in Twelfth-Century Religious Discourse
Peter Lombard's 'Sentences' and the Development of Theology
Volume 8
Careers and Opportunities at the Roman Curia, 1300-1500
A Socio-Economic History of Papal Administration
Volume 29
Mulieres Religiosae
Shaping Female Spiritual Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Periods
Volume 12
Gendered Identities in Bernard of Clairvaux’s ‘Sermons on the Song of Songs’
Performing the Bride
Volume 15
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