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Moving Lists: Enumeration between Use and Aesthetics, Storing and Creating

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2019

Abstract

This chapter concentrates on the list, one of the most archaic forms of writing, and considers both medieval European Latin lists as well as the Old Norse vernacular lists (þulur). Doležalová briefly analyzes several lists linked in different ways to memory, including lists summarizing longer texts, lists for artificial memory and meditational lists.

A careful consideration on the different ways in which these widespread lists operate and move between memory and paper illuminates less obvious aspects of medieval storage and management of information. Rather than seeing a passage from one form to another (oral to written), this study of lists contributes to the idea of the oral-written continuum as a multidimensional space, in which each medium has a meaningful function.

The chapter then examines in detail what material elements (layout, handwriting, repeated reproduction, etc.) of a list reveal.