Forms of List-Making: Epistemic, Literary, and Visual Enumeration

This open access book attempts to show that an examination of the list’s formal features has the potential to produce genuine insights into the production of knowledge, the poetics of literature and the composition of visual art. Following a conceptual introduction, the twelve single-authored chapters place the list in a variety of well-researched contexts, including ancient Roman historiography, medieval painting, Enlightenment periodicals, nineteenth-century botanical geography, American Beat poetry and contemporary photobooks. With its interdisciplinary approach, this book is a unique contribution to an emerging field dedicated to the study of lists.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction: Epistemic and Artistic list-Making; Roman Alexander Barton, Julia Böckling, Sarah Link and Anne Rüggemeier. - 2. Between Narrativity, Memory and Administration: Lists in Roman Historiography; Martin Stöckinger.- 3. Lore and Order? Enlisting Rabbinic Epistemology; Lennart Lehmhaus.- 4. Moral Curiosity Cabinets: Listing and the Character Sketch in Addison and Steele’s Periodicals; Theresa Schön.- 5. The Lists of Alexander von Humboldt: On the Epistemology of Scientific Practice; Ottmar Ette.- 6. Don’t Trust the List: The Politics of Enumeration and Capitalist Discourse in the Novel; Eva von Contzen.- 7. More than a Canon: Lists of Contents in British Poetry Anthologies; Stefanie Lethbridge.- 8. Aesthetic Unrest: “Howl” and the Literary List; Alyson Brickey.- 9. Culinary list form in the experimental Poetry of 1960’s Finland: Literary Menus and Recipes; Juri Joensuu.- 10. Poetological Lists: Writing-Scences in Contemporary Literature; Ulrike Vedder.- 11. Between Order and Chaos: Lists in Children’s Literature; Agnes Blümer.- 12. Aesthetics of Enumeration: The Arma Christi in Medieval Visual Art; Daniela Wagner.- 13. Et cetera Photobooks? Reflections on Conceptual Documentary Photography as Visual Enumeration; Anja Schürmann.- 

About the Author :
Roman Alexander Barton was appointed assistant professor at Freiburg University, Germany, in 2020. Previously, he held a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship at the ERC-funded project Lists in Literature and Culture. He has published extensively on eighteenth-century philosophy and fiction. Currently, he investigates the history of the literary list and modernist short drama. Julia Caroline Böckling works as a research associate at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany, where she pursues a PhD on the relationship between lists and consumerism as part of the ERC-funded project Lists in Literature and Culture. Her research interests include intertextuality, representations of consumerism, and narratology. Sarah J. Link is a research associate at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies and a member of the ERC-funded project Lists in Literature and Culture, where she recently completed her PhD on lists indetective fiction. Her research interests include narratology, cognitive literary studies, Romanticism, detective fiction, and literature and science.  Anne Rüggemeier is postdoctoral research fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. As a member of the ERC-funded project Lists in Literature and Culture she investigates the multiple ways in which lists in illness narratives re-negotiate the power effects of science and administration. She has published extensively on life writing, relationality, graphic narratives and in the field of medical humanities.