Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age

"Reading the World is the most interesting book I have encountered in the field of medieval encyclopedism. Mary Franklin-Brown's continued dialogue with Foucault means that her study is never merely descriptive, but always an intellectual and theoretical endeavor. While benefiting from Foucault's archaeological approach, Franklin-Brown importantly rebuts his account of premodern discourses of knowledge--which for Foucault are predicated on likeness--showing that they instead combine figuration with compilation in a way that is itself textually knowing and regularly puts itself in question. Franklin-Brown's focus on the complexity of medieval modes of knowing guides her appraisal of the encyclopedic texts themselves, across an impressive range of Latin, French, Occitan, and Catalan works."

--Sarah Kay, New York University

"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. With these, Franklin-Brown combines a considerable knowledge of patristic and medieval biblical exegesis and the full range of medieval rhetoric and figural modes, as well as a wide knowledge of medieval Latin literature and a ready familiarity with many of the encyclopedists' ancient sources. The result is a tour de force."

--Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University

"This is a fascinating and innovative study of scholastic compilation and the reading practices it fostered, but it is also much more than that. Mary Franklin-Brown offers exciting new readings of vernacular texts whose 'encyclopedic' qualities have long been recognized, but never so insightfully analyzed; and on the intertextual networks in which medieval literary and scientific texts alike participate."

--Sylvia Huot, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge

"Written with grace, critical sophistication, and a deep knowledge of its subjects, Reading the World will likely be the standard English-language reference on scholastic encyclopedism for some time to come, and a major contribution to all study of medieval intellectual and cultural history. Both specialist and nonspecialist readers will enjoy Franklin-Brown's analyses, which extend our understanding of the scope of the medieval encyclopedic enterprise with many provocative and valuable insights."

--Mark D. Johnston, DePaul University

"It is a powerfully provocative, strikingly well-written book, which is exciting in a multitude of intellectually distinguished directions."-- "Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing"