)LFWLRQDO(QF\FORSHGLVPDQGWKH&RJQLWLYH9DOXHRI/LWHUDWXUH

$XWKRUV5RQDOG76ZLJJHU
5HYLHZHGZRUNV
6RXUFH&RPSDUDWLYH/LWHUDWXUH6WXGLHV9RO1R'HFSS
3XEOLVKHGE\Penn State University Press
6WDEOH85/http://www.jstor.org/stable/40246100 .
$FFHVVHG

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Comparative Literature Studies.

http://www.jstor.org
 Fictional Encyclopedism and the
Cognitive Value of Literature
RONALD T. SWIGGER
ABSTRACT
Encyclopedism, the drive toward comprehensive knowledge and system-
atic perception, is a recurring feature of modern and contemporary litera-
ture. Quests for knowledge and displays of expertise, even when parodied,
continue to be central literary concerns. Hermann Broch wrote of the "Un-
geduld nach Erkenntnis" ("impatience for cognition") of poets, and de-
scribed the "Drang zur Universalit at" of the great, representative writers.
Such qualities and concerns have been relatively neglected by recent crit-
ics. Appreciation of the practice of several recent writers entails reconsider-
ation of the generic and traditional backgrounds of encyclopedism. Frye's
account of the anatomy provides orientation, while Bakhtin's discussion
of the Menippean satire offers new criteria and formulations for the study
of literature's encyclopedic thrust.
Encyclopedism, in these forms and related patterns, has been employed as
a structure by many modern writers. Several of the issues connected with the
question of literature's "cognitive" value are clearly raised by the fictional
encyclopedias of Flaubert, Borges, and Raymond Queneau. Flaubert's Bouvard
et Pécuchet suggests that the intellect can prevail, though at the cost of radical
skepticism. Borges proposes generalizations of the notion of the encyclopedia
as universal work of art in "Tlôn, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" and in "The Aleph."
His aesthetic perspective views knowledge as a field for artful play with per-
mutations and combinations. Queneau's work combines an encyclopedic grasp
of the ranges of modern knowledge with a poetic exuberance that is frequently
parodie. His art is a vindication of a classical poetics, encyclopedism as the lu-
cidity and freedom of intellect. These three authors are outstanding examples;
their work and that of others who can be called encyclopedists indicate that
literature may express the experience of "knowledge" in valuable ways, as its
defenders have maintained. "Encyclopedism" is itself an assertion of concern
for the expression of knowledge; study of its principles and variations could
offer solutions for criticism of some of the problems raised by perennial crises
in humanistic studies. (RTS)

What do literature and the study of literature have to do with

knowledge, with what a scientist or philosopher might call exact or
true knowledge of the nature of things? In recent years "true knowl-
edge" has come to be considered in terms of its "cognitivity." Does
literature, or the study of literature, have any "cognitive" value?
These are old questions of aesthetics and, since they quickly plunge
one into the technicalities and ultimate conundrums of epistemology,
they are not answerable in the compass of a reasonably delimited es-
say. This paper does not aim to settle such questions; rather, its aim
is to propose to critics that literature be studied in terms of its use
of and aspirations toward knowledge, and to propose that one way
of orienting oneself to these problems is to consider the ways in
which encychpedism continues to be an ambition of literature,
even in our age of parody, commercialization, and technocracy.
Awarenessof this aspect of modern literature sheds light on con-

351
352 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

tinuities with older traditions which should enhance our understand-

ing of the value and full extent of humanistic studies. At any rate,
attention to encyclopedism leads to a fuller appreciation of several
modern and contemporary works which have exploited the devices,
forms, and problems of the traditions involved.
The dying poet in Broch's Der Tod des Vergiltells Augustus that
his goal in life had been to attain knowledge, truth, genuine percep-
tion ("das Wissen, die Wahrheit. . . die Erkenntnis"). Poetry, he says,
is "Ungeduld nach Erkenntnis" - impatience for cognition. Caesar
agrees, adding that the all-encompassingscope of poetry is a "divine"
attribute. Here Broch has Vergil demur, for his Vergil now feels that
his life has been wasted in the misguided service of beauty; now the
knowledgeability of Sallust and Livy appear to him to be worth far
more than the erudition of the Aeneid, and Varro'streatises on agri-
culture seem much more valuable than the merely pretty Georgics.
Augustus, who had heard that Vergil wants to renounce - to de-
stroy - the Aeneid, argues that it is precisely the poet's ability to
comprise all of life in one vision, to embrace it in one work, that is
such an important contribution to society.1
The value, for the poet and for society, of art's way to genuine
knowledge (Broch's Erkenntnis) is a central issue in Der Tod des
Vergil Compared to the historically and empirically grounded re-
searchesof Livy and Varro, are the dealings of poetry with knowl-
edge merely trivial? Vergil may or may not have had misgivings
about the value of his art (Broch was following one of the legends
about the epic poet), but in any case Broch's characteristicpre-
occupation with Erkenntnis represents a recurrent concern of liter-
ature and of criticism. Impatience for cognition, for perception, is
qualified in our modern and "postmodern" literaturesby various
reservations: skepticism, aestheticism, and various sorts of irony.
Still, the Drang zur Universalitât,the compelling aim to be all-
inclusive and all-knowing, that drive which Broch singled out as a
feature of Joyce's work, is not only a feature of Broch's writing;
it is also found in many modern writers who may be a good deal
less earnest than Broch.2 The desire to grasp the truth, to compre-
hend and articulate a unified and total vision of the world, is a re-
current characteristicof literature as such; perhaps in consideration
of the prevalence of ironic views of the value of literature, we need
reminding that even in this century writers continue to be impelled
by the verve, the gusto, the energy - what Pirsigcalls gumption -
in short, by the qualities of the kind of encyclopedism and unifying
perspectives we usually associate with epic poets and Baconian en-
terprises.3 In spite of the tension between Promethean science or
technical philosophy, on the one hand, with their often forbidding
"official" views of Being, and poetry, Orphic poetry, on the other
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 353

hand, with its now usually somewhat defensively "unofficial" views,4

it seems that the Drang zur Universalitàt,the drive for comprehensive-
ness which is a natural concomitant of the poet's impatience for per-
ception, has not been abandoned to the Livys, the Sallusts, or to the
"new journalism" and the literature of reportage. The search for
knowledge seems inevitably to be matter for parody in contemporary
literature, as it is, for example, in Gravity's Rainbow; or we observe
that knowledge is sometimes reduced to packaged "facts" (or "infor-
mation") that serve to make best sellers more attractive, as in Michen-
er's Centennial. But there are several contemporary authors - Pynchon,
Pirsig,Barth, Vonnegut, Nabokov, GiintherGrass, Butor, Italo Cal-
vino, and others - for whom the vigor and the Rabelaisiangusto of
learningand expert elaboration are still vital aspects of literature.
The impulse to comprehensivenessin cognition, the Ungeduld and
the Drang Broch expressed, taken together, could be called simply
the encyclopedic impulse. To be sure, encyclopedism and universal-
ism are in some ways distinguishable: the former implies a scheme
of ordering and classification, while the latter may plunge straight
ahead, as in a sense it does in Broch's novel, to a mystic glimpse of
the oneness of all, beyond categories. For the purposes of this essay,
however, the distinction need not be crucial. Even in Broch's Tod
des Vergil- and in this respect it is comparable to most twentieth-
century novels - the ultimate vision of mystic union is preceded by
a survey of the varieties and categories of existence. But Der Tod des
Vergilis not itself the best or the most accessible instance of fic-
tional encyclopedism, though the dilemmas of the artist who sees
knowledge through art are well posed. Other works can illustrate
the issues somewhat more clearly; after all, Broch's novel is primarily
concerned with the experience of death. Its encyclopedism is, in a
sense, incidental.
Modern literature usually offers, if only in passing or implicity,
its own criticism of literary procedure. Self-consciousness is a feature
of encyclopedism, too (and, in fact, has traditionally been a feature
of this kind of writing). One of the ways to approach the issues raised
in Broch's novel is to examine some fictions which are explicitly and
critically concerned with encyclopedism. These works, and their ge-
neric background, illuminate the tendency of literature to embrace
everything there is, and to offer satisfactions, or, failing that, ap-
propriate displacements of the impatience for Erkenntnis. There are
many works which can be called encyclopedic fictions: Flaubert's
Bouvardvt Pécuchet, an encyclopédie critique en farce, as he called
it, is perhaps the first modern encyclopedic fiction. The works of
Jorge Luis Borges and Raymond Queneau offer later examples of
the possibilities for literature to be developed in fictional encyclo-
pedism. The fictional encyclopedia of Orbis Tertius or Tlôn invented
by Borges is a salient and pregnant example of a fiction that deals
354 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

with encyclopedism as such; and Raymond Queneau offers the exam-

ple of an encyclopedically gifted and concerned writer who, we might
say, works in the fields of both Livy and Vergil, since he is both poet
and professional encyclopedist. The works of these two writers hark
back to Flaubert and, through and beyond his precedent, to the tra-
ditions of encyclopedism in literature.
The generic background of the encyclopedic impulse is to be found
in the traditions of the Menippean satire and the anatomy. For exam-
ple, Frye pointed out in his Anatomy of Criticismthat "the encyclo-
pedic approach to the construction of Bouvard et Pécuchet is quite
comprehensible if we explain it as markingan affinity with the Menip-
pean tradition." Frye also proposed that the "exuberant" encyclo-
pedism of Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, Goethe, Hugo, Melville,Joyce, and
severalother writers can be better understood if we take their affini-
ties with this tradition into account.5 Another attempt to come to
grips with the protean variety of fiction is to be found in Mikhail
Bakhtin's book, Problems of Dostoevsky 9sPoetics.^ Bakhtin pro-
poses that the seemingly rough or aberrantfeatures of Dostoevsky's
novels, which he calls "polyphonic" novels, can be explained if one
associates them with the Menippean tradition.
Bakhtin offers a detailed account of the Menippean tradition. He
discusses the "dialogical"background of the serio-comic genres (the
Socratic dialogues of Plato and others); he stresses the contribution of
the attitude of carnival,which he says was a feature of European cul-
ture until the Renaissance. "Dialogical" tensions and carnivalper-
spectives are the main elements of the tradition of the Menippean
satire, which Bakhtin calls simply the menippea. They are implicit
in many of the characteristicfeatures of the genre, and they appear
to be elaborated in the list of such features which Bakhtin supplies.
It is an interesting list, including such points as the following: the
menippea is more comic than the Socratic dialogues; there is a great
deal of fantasy, experimental fantasticality (as in unusual perspec-
tives); there is experimentation with extreme psychological states,
such as the split personality so often found in Dostoevsky; often
the genre includes Utopian aspects; there are often sharp contrasts,
oxymorons (the oxymoron is a figure of which Borges is very fond,
incidentally, and there are numerous oxymoronic phrasingsin Broch's
novel); a variety of forms may be employed, including dialogue, nar-
ration, verses, songs, letters; and the menippea is topical, often po-
lemical. The menippea is the "ultimate genre of ultimate concerns"
and so it explicitly confronts eschatological, theological, ontological,
or just plain existential issues; however, there is no stress on philo-
sophical or religious decorum. The register of vocabulary may range
from the loftiest erudition, even sublime poetry, to the most pungent
slang. (Note that even Der Tod des Vergil,which is hardly a satire,
though it does have some Menippean aspects, includes passages of
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 355

bawdry.) Knowledge and wisdom are frequently carnivalizedin the

menippea, that is, these ultimate matters are viewed from a perspec-
tive of "jolly relativity" as Bakhtin calls it.7
Frye's anatomical analysis of the component genres of fiction is
well known: the menippea or anatomy is one of the four basic forms,
along with the novel, romance, and the confession. Frye's account of
the menippea, though less detailed than Bakhtin's, given Frye's more
general purposes, does lead directly to the description of a fifth es-
sential form, the "specific encyclopedic form," which Frye compares
to sacred texts.8 We might call this Frye's ultimate genre of ultimate
concern, for it seems that it is here that his vision of literature and
his vision of criticism come together. Throughout the Anatomy, of
course, Frye alludes to his vision of literature which sees the art,
taken as a whole, as a man's vision of reality. In every period, ac-
cording to Frye's theory of genres, writers have developed forms and
works which, like sacred books, provide comprehensive or encyclo-
pedic visions. Frye associates these visions with anagogy, literature's
total order of words which tends to comprise or reflect the totality
of Being. In his theory of symbols, Frye proposed that at this ulti-
mate level of representation, a symbol may be taken as a monad:
from its perspective, the entire universe may be viewed and grasped
intelligibly. Frye's references to the encyclopedic thrust of literature
should be taken into account along with his remarkson the form of
the anatomy; at the same time, the background of the menippea,
with its frequent outbursts of "jolly relativity," should not be neg-
lected in discussing anagogy.
Stevick expressed surprise,in an article on Frye published in 1968,
that so few critics had explored the anatomy and its traditions along
the lines suggested by Frye's theory.9 Since then, very little has
been done in the way of exploring, either to substantiate or to dis-
prove, Frye's suggestion that encyclopedism is a symptom of litera-
ture's inveterate tendency to establish itself as a total order of words,
an order in which human beings tell themselves what they know and
understandabout the universe. Proposals for adjusted generic para-
digms often lead to the kind of speculation which deters so many
from reading Frye, yet such proposals, particularlywhen they are
as fruitful as Bakhtin's, ought to be part of the tendency of criti-
cism nowadays to reassess the value of literature in the scheme of
human knowledge and endeavor. Whetheror not literature has the
ultimate significance, the cognitive value, that Frye's critical per-
spective and Broch's theories envision, whether literature has any-
thing to do with knowledge in these senses, are issues which critics
should approach with an understandingof the generic and traditional
contexts. The sympathetic interest and the historical curiosity of
Bakhtin are exemplary. The areas where menippea and "specific
encyclopedic form" overlap should receive more attention, not
356 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

because the matter of generic classification is in itself so urgent, but

because in these ultimate genres we may see how literature has served
and may continue to serve to extend the boundaries of "culture" so
that all the various means of cognition which are employed in the pur-
suit and maintenance of "civilization" may be comprised within one
field, a field which speaks for and sums up the possibilities for knowl-
edge open to humans. To focus on what I am describing as encyclo-
pedism is one way of developing the fields of study opened up by the
proposals and discoveries of Frye and Bakhtin.10
As he labored over the Temptations de St. Antoine, and as he worked
on his last book, Bouvard et Pécuchet, Flaubert bore in mind the tra-
ditions with which these works should be associated. Both are Faustian
projects; Bouvard et Pécuchet in particularis concerned with the status
and the very possibility of knowledge. Flaubert knew that his prede-
cessors were Goethe, and Rabelais, Cervantes,Voltaire, and Swift;
Bouvard et Pécuchet, his "encyclopédie critique en farce," would be
recognized, he thought, either as a "lourde sottise" or "quelque chose
de très fort."11 The organized account of the failures of his two
"bonshommes" in their efforts to acquire knowledge was to be con-
cluded with their return to copying, and the compilation of the Dic-
tionnaire des Idées reçues, which was to make up the second volume.
The unfinished work's probable ending compels us to wonder about
the import of the total project. Reliable indications do exist. The
question is whether Bouvard and Pécuchet are merely fools, or wheth-
er they, like Candide, represent one of the philosophical options avail-
able to civilized men: sagacious withdrawal from the world's hubbub,
to a vantage point which allows serene observation of all that is left
behind. The book, even as we have it, is certainly one of those ulti-
mate books which sum up an era. It is modern in several senses; the
epithet "critique" connotes the reflective, paradoxical, and skeptical
qualities of its modernity, as well as suggests that the book's satirical
project is obviously to be associated with the Menippean tradition.
Flaubert's two men of good will come to grief in each of their
enterprises, usually with comic effect, because of their lack of meth-
od and due to the downright unpredictability of nature. In each of
their projects they act in good faith: they are willing to consult the
authorities, or, as excellent clientele for encyclopedias, to "look it
up," in Buffon, for example. This naive reliance on expertise and
erudition is designed by Flaubert to serve Menippean ends, and the
book as we have it, that is, the completed sections of the first volume,
is packed with lists, citations, and distillations, in dialogue form (a
hallmarkof the menippea) of intellectual argumentation. Each of
their concerns develops out of earlier failures so that, though the
sequence may be according to nothing more systematic than chance,
the book as a whole does offer an organized hierarchy of the realms
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 357

of knowledge. From agriculturethe two questers move through the

sciences, thence to history, literature, and politics, and eventually
they are impelled to confront the ultimate issues of philosophy and
religion. The ironic enterprise which causes them to retire to copying
is pedagogy. In this, Bouvard and Pécuchet necessarily fail since they
themselves know nothing certainly and because, with their honesty,
they cannot contend with the baseness and stupidity of those they
would like to enlighten. The work is a satirical, encyclopedic cri-
tique of nineteenth-century perversionsof the Faustian impulse to
know. The supposedly progressivetendencies of the time are thor-
oughly discredited: through Bouvard and Pécuchet Flaubert un-
masks the pretentious "authorities" of the age, the exponents and
the popularizersof "official" history, philosophy, theology, art,
literature. Finding no agreement among the authorities they con-
sult, no satisfaction of their desire"to know, Bouvard and Pécuchet
pointedly ask "where is the rule? Not finding it, they resort to a -
melancholy and rather self-servingjudgement: "c'est de la blague"
it's all mockery.12
Their very impatience to know dooms them to this view and to
various superficialperspectives they adopt along the way. Flaubert
himself was something of a Faustian quester - and doubter - and
his standardsof accuracy and intellectual honesty certainly made
him impatient with those who were less scrupulous than he; this
denunciation of the blagues of the age, and of many fields of knowl-
edge, was one in which he concurred. Flaubert's impatience - im-
patience for cognition, to use Broch's phrase - is clearly discernible
in the frustrations of Bouvardand Pécuchet. Certainly, there is more
to this impatience than scorn of bovarysme or satirical spleen, how-
ever. In their quests for authority and reliable knowledge, Bouvard
and Pécuchet have a knack, obviously related to Flaubert's own
scrupulosity, for penetrating to the very conceptual center of what-
ever field they are studying, for finding the paradox, the circular
argument, or fatal antinomy usually ignored by practicing special-
ists. Thus the inability of these two autodidacts to find "the rule"
is Flaubert's means for illustrating the shiftiness of the sands on
which the culture of his age was built. At the end, the intelligence
of Bouvard and Pécuchet does develop as they revert to a passive
mode, copying, as in the beginning. They are no longer naively
presumptious, like Faust's Wagner,but have seen through culture,
and can look on, like Candide. The quest for conclusive knowledge
is known to be the quest of an illusion.
Flaubert'sremarkto the effect that concluding is the greatest
stupidity has become proverbial.13However, Bouvard et Pécuchet
should not be taken as a cynical dismissal of the mind's enterprises.
Encyclopedism is satirized, demonstrating that the organization of
knowledge is inevitably arbitraryand conventional, often in the
358 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

service of brutal interests in power for the sake of power. But the be-
lief that the intellect can be sharpenedand refined, and that mind can
free itself of error, is definitely not abandoned by Flaubert. The enter-
prise of constructing such a work, and of celebrating thus the inno-
cence of his two "bonshommes" in their final wisdom, was an enter-
prise of criticism, a critique. As such, it relied on exactly those quali-
ties of mentality which seemed to Flaubert to have been so disas-
trously cheapened in his own lifetime. Thus the book's anatomical-
menippean attack on the false confidence of accepted nineteenth-
century thought, and of the paradoxes and difficulties inherent in any
thought, make this work a prolegomenon to our own century's even
more severely skeptical and ironical compendia: "The Waste Land,"
Ulysses, Doktor Faustus, for example. Such modern works have pur-
sued the enterprise or impulse of Flaubert's critical encyclopedism;
they are compendia, industriously and diligently gathered, of lore,
anecdote, fact, - the debris of civilization, by usual implication.
The encyclopedism of Jorge Luis Borges, or, to use an associated
term, his "universalism,"is rather less "exuberant" than the drive
we find in Flaubert; the satirical edge and fervor we detect in much
of Flaubert's work is rarely encountered in Borges.14The attitude
to knowledge indicated by most of his "fictions" is even more aes-
thetic than Flaubert's formalist inclinations. In 1932, Borges wrote a
"defense" of Bouvard et Pécuchet, but he stressed above all the aes-
thetic dimension; that is, the book's form appealed to him, but its
possible significance with regardto the scope and value of literature
was a matter which did not detain him.15 In general, Borges is more
interested in the shape of a conjecture than in its potential signifi-
cance. His fictions are frequently based on dreams, nightmares,or
waking reveriesand speculations; for Borges, knowledge is some-
thing like a dream. Philosophic idealism a la Berkeley or aesthetic
idealism continually intrigues him. In his encyclopedic conjectures,
for all their sardonic qualities and disillusionments, there is, there-
fore, a recurrent sense of detachment or abstraction. Borges is inter-
ested in the infinite proliferation of theories and details of cross-
reference that could be studied once the encyclopedic perspective
has been adopted, but it is that potential - the potential of infini-
tude - which is the focus of his attention rather than the specific
details or the irreducibleprinciples of a given branch of knowledge.
The contradictions and antinomies don't bother him as they did
Flaubert. Where Flaubert labored over the selection of satirically
damning and detailed evidence, Borges is concise, schematic, and
general (though, to be sure, his texts are usually rich in recondite
allusion and lore, both real and imagined).
Again and again, Borges has toyed with the notion of the written
word as the supreme repository of knowledge. As it happens, one of
his most famous fictions is the speculation on the impact of an
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 359

artificial encyclopedia on civilization itself. The lore of the imagined

Tlôn becomes so obsessive that "real" history, the history which had
been recorded in earlier encyclopedias, is forgotten. Even though the
encyclopedia of Tlôn is fragmentary,and difficult to interpret, its
apparent coherence of allusion is finally seductive. Borges notes, in
the end, that reality, in the Thirties, was eager to yield to the blan-
dishments of invented systems. People forget that the rigor of the
encyclopedia "es un rigor de ajedreistas,no de angeles" (is a rigor of
games, not of the angels).16 Thus the world is seen as a systematic
structure of fictions; a calculated world of "as if" (Vaihinger'strea-
tise on the philosophy of A Is Ob is mentioned in the text) is set off
against a danger: that reality will be submergedby mendacious fic-
tions. This is apparently all the more the case since one of the fic-
tions of Tlôn is that Berkleyan philosophy is the basis for thought,
culture, and action.17
Borges' fictions offer many sly warningsto those who would
hastily identify knowledge of reality with the lore of the most in-
genious and learnedpoeta doctus. Many of his texts explore the pos-
sibilities for speculation that derive from combining meditations on
infinity with the idea of the book as repository of knowledge or the
tool of memory. Such texts are clearly about the notion proposed
by Frye and others that literature is a total order of words in which
man's dream of the universe is projected. Borges is most interested
in symbols which, like Frye's "symbol-as-monad,"can come to stand
for or offer a vision of the totality of reality: the Aleph, a mirror
(or letter, as a reductio of the book as symbol) which reflects all
the universe and all times; the library of Babel, where all possible
books are kept in a maze of infinite vastness; the lore of the Kab-
bala; the biography of the "Immortal" who turns out to be the arche-
-
typal author, Homer, and everyman in all these we see Borges both
intrigued by and skeptical of the possibility that there might be a
total order of words which would reflect or even be the truth of the
cosmos.18 It appears that Borges is serious about knowledge - that
is, he is no skeptic - but his seriousness is aesthetic. Culture is a dream
of fictions, and therefore primarily a field for play with permutations
and combinations.19 His work should definitely be considered with-
in the tradition of the menippea and the encyclopedic impulse; how-
ever, his coolly invented symbols and paradoxes, and the sketchy,
schematic characterof many texts indicate an "impatience" for cog-
nition which is closer to the sophisticate's reaction to tiresome detail
than to the cosmic perspectives of Broch's Vergil. Erkenntnis, for
Borges, is condemned to an aesthetic condition of relativism.
Beneath this aestheticism, there is, not surprisingly,a paradox:
knowledge of one sort or another is taken for granted and toyed with
in permutations, paradoxes, and contrived relationships (oxymorons,
for example), and yet, again and again, the symbol-as-monaddeveloped,
360 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

be it Library,Aleph, or encyclopedia, is dismissed as false or exposed

to doubt and left open to further artful elaboration. Borges' texts fol-
low a principle of literature and philosophy in Tlôn: "A book which
does not contain its counter-book is considered incomplete" (p. 113).
The claim that the elaboration of a complete encyclopedia of Tlôn
would be mankind'sgreatest undertaking is treated ironically by
Borges the narrator;Borges, the designer of the text, draws our at-
tention to an old ambition of literature and one of the potential pit-
falls of idealist aesthetics (and of many defenses of poetry and the
imagination as a faculty). He does so by alluding to the analogy, so
often encountered in writing about poets, which compares the acts
of imagination to God's creative actions. One of the patrons of the
encyclopedia "wanted to demonstrate to this nonexistent God that
mortal man was capable of conceiving a world" (p. 15). Thus, clearly,
Borges has generalized the act of imagination, or, we might say, litera-
ture as such, by speculating on the impact and value of an encyclo-
pedic endeavor. Literature, considered as an institution, is, he there-
by shows, encyclopedic, but he also shows that encyclopedism can be
dangerously misleading. There is a Drang zur Universalitatin Borges,
but it is itself an urge which can be ironically viewed from the de-
tached and lucid perspective of his art's playful way with intellect.
Raymond Queneau, best known for Zazie dans le Metro, Exer-
cises de style, and Pierrot mon ami, and often mistakenly thought of
as a "humorist," is an encyclopedist.20 He directs the Encyclopédie
de la Pléiade, published by Gallimard.This encyclopedia is a series
of volumes on major subjects, arrangedaccording to the main divi-
sions of knowledge rather than according to the convenient, but arbi-
trary, alphabetical system which has been the norm in encyclopedias
for a couple of hundred years. Queneau has personally edited the
three volume Histoire des Littératures. Queneau came to this project
as a writer already versed in encyclopedic endeavors, and as a writer
exceptionally knowledgeable in the fields of literature, mathematics,
philosophy, and painting. He is a professional encyclopedist, but he
was a literary encyclopedist before he assumed the responsibility for
directing the publishing venture.
Queneau's first literary enterprise, after some interesting poetry
and a few forays into surrealism,was an Encyclopédie des sciences
inexactes, a laborious compilation of texts by nineteenth-century ec-
centrics. He completed this project before he began his first novel, Le
Chiendent (1933), but none of the publishers he consulted deemed
the compendium worth printing. Later Queneau reworked the mate-
rial and was able to exhibit some of his circle squarers,system buil-
ders, and naive metaphysicians in the framework of a novel, Les En-
fants du Limon (1938). The novel includes a suitably displaced ac-
count of the researches.21The Encyclopédie is attributed to the
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 361

enterprise of one Professor Chambernac,who is assisted by a poor

devil - a novice imp - named Purpurlan.This demon attempts to ex-
tort a place on the faculty of Chambernac'sCollege, but he is tricked
in turn by the Professor and forced to sign a pact with him. The pro-
fessor he wants to replace is named, as a signal to us, Bouvard. Thus
we have a double allusion: to Flaubert's novel and to its predecessor
in rangingthe fields of knowledge, Faust. Here the poor devil is com-
pelled to serve four years as research assistant in return for Chamber-
nac's forbearance. The novel exhibits many features of the anatomy
in addition to the extensive citations from the eccentrics on exhibit:
there are songs, verses, dialogues, lists, genealogies, and, of course,
bibliographies.The novel is concerned with much more than the re-
searchesof Chambernacand Purpurlan,as there are other sets of
characterswho are engaged in their pursuits and quests. The mate-
rial of the encyclopedia Chambernacassembles serves, as do the re-
searchesof Bouvard and Pécuchet, to exhibit the prevalence of in-
ferior thinking and the elusiveness of truth. The professor eventually
becomes obsessed with the cataloguing of persistent and stubborn
error. He finally surmounts the vanity of his involvement in the pro-
ject by seeing it as vanity, and by understandingthe evil influence
of the demon's aid. He throws him in the Seine, where he dissolves
with a sulfurous sizzle. Chambernacthen hands over the manu-
script, which he, too, has found to be unpublishable, to a young
man he meets in a café. The young man, named, of course, Ray-
mond Queneau, plans to include the Encyclopédie in a novel about
a professor who has a demonic assistant, etc.
Where Flaubert exposes the superficiality and pomposity of popu-
larizersand self-appointed authorities, Queneau goes a step further
and catalogues the aberrantthinkers, crackpot cosmologists, and
half-bakedgnostics who were also a telling feature of nineteenth-
century culture. Queneau found no undiscovered geniuses, as he
had hoped he might. Furthermore, as he has suggested, to compile
such a catalogue, and to want to publish it, is, in effect, to be an-
other of the fous littéraires it enumerates. The novel is a clever way
for Queneau both to present the material his research has uncovered
and to rise above the enterprise, demonstrating its uselessness. Like
Candide, Chambernac,and other charactersin the novel, end their
days in useful work, particularly life's manual tasks. Like Bouvard
et Pécuchet, Les Enfants du Limon parodies encyclopedism, but it
is an encyclopedic work which, like Flaubert's, offers glimpses of
wisdom."
In an essay from the Thirties, Queneau claimed that a true ency-
clopedia is simply impossible in our century and that, rather than
being impatient to know and to probe, we should practice an ethos
of désencombrement; the limits of human and humane knowledge
should be accepted.23 Queneau did not exactly follow his own ex-
362 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

hortations as he did become the director of a new encyclopedia. In

his creative work, too, he has tended rather to extend than to limit
the bounds of his own knowledge. He has most convincingly demon-
strated his own brand of the Drang zur Universalitâtin his Petite cos-
mogonie portative.** Here, in a sense, we move from the anatomy to
a specific encyclopedic form. In six cantos of dazzling alexandrines,
Queneau surveys the origin of the solar system, the formation of the
elements, the beginnings of life and evolution, the history of humani-
ty (which is accorded two lines), and the history of inventions. In the
third canto, a prosopopeia is included, so that Hermes Trismegistus
may explain the author's purpose. It is preceded by the author's own
assertion that, though readers may be put off by the technical vocabu-
lary of his poem, he is not trying to be obscure: "hermétique ne suis
herméneutique accepte." Hermes then explains that the poet is not
didactic, since he doesn't claim to be an expert. Rather, it is sup-
posed to be a question of the words: "il voit dans chaque science un
registre bouillant" - so why not write about pitchblend, wolfram,
chromosomes? 25
The appeal to Hermes Trismegistus is amusing and instructive. If
we recall the Orphic backgrounds of the hermetic tradition, we can
see that Queneau is adopting a light-heartedapproach to the Orphic
project: the singing of the words which bring the working of the
world under the sway of the poet. But Queneau has properly denied
hermeticism, and we can hardly say that he is an Orphic poet; at
most he would accept the term hermeneutic. It is an interesting
distinction, which, may, after all, return us to a variety of Orphism:
Queneau will undertake the interpretation of the words for the world
which science has devised, as a way of getting back to the age-old
poetic concern with the workings of the world, cosmology and cos-
mogony.26 This level-headed and carefree attitude to the power and
status of poetry and to the accomplishments and power of science
has always been characteristicof Queneau. He is apoeta doctus, but
no vates. He would no doubt decline both appellations. For him,
poetry is a deliberate craft, and the skills required for its practice,
given talent, can be learned, revised, and developed.
It is characteristicof Queneau to be entirely undaunted by the
"difficulties" of science. A follower of mathematics, Queneau is one
of the very few modern writers to follow Apollinaire's injunction to
modern poets, and vie with the scientists' liberté encyclopédique.^7
Queneau has not been troubled by the challenge of science or over-
powered by its claims. There is no pleasure, he has pointed out, in
not understandingsomething, and there is no reason to boast, as
some literary people still do, that mathematics is an incomprehensible
domain. Queneau is in many ways an exemplary writer of and for our
century: while he knows full well that everything is thrown into doubt,
he has not lost his nerve or felt that poetry should be scrapped, either
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 363

as an inheritance or an activity. Queneau never displays the impa-

tience for perception and knowledge that Broch's Vergil enunci-
ated as he knows so well the limits of any individual confronta-
tion of the sum of modern knowledge. But the desire, the thrust,
is still present. His recent poem, "Projet," ends, for example,
with a reference to this thrust: one day he will "peut-être résoudre
l'énigme."28 For the most part, then, his reserve, his skepticism, and
his humor bespeak the confidence in intelligence that we also find
in Borges and Flaubert, and in many other writers who can be associ-
ated with varieties of encyclopedism. Like Flaubert, Queneau re-
spects genuine science insofar as it is methodical, skeptical, reserved,
prudent, and human.29 Like Borges, he is fond of the shape of scien-
tific ideas, and enjoys the patterns that are suggested, often uncon-
sciously, by its vocabularies. Like many modern writers, he often
notes the absurdity of the activities of many scientists and self-
styled "thinkers"who claim the mantle of "science" for their domi-
neering projects.
In Queneau's oeuvre, we see that the antinomies of Broch's novel,
and of many of the discussions of the relationships between art and
science (fact and utility are set off against beauty and value, reason
and cognition are opposed to insight and appreciation, etc.), are anti-
nomies and paradoxes which can, after all, be calmly countenanced.
The poet need not abandon the accomplishments of human knowl-
edge to the likes of Varro, Sallust, and Livy. According to Queneau,
anyone who is willing to be taught can follow the achievements of
science. In an article in the Times Literary Supplement in 1967,
Queneau pointed out that the social sciences are endeavoring to be-
come mathematical and that this is one more instance of the need for
the poet - or read "literary person," which would include the critic -
to come to terms with the potential contributions which an under-
standingof science and mathematics can make to literature. The sci-
ences are arrangedin a circle, he says, and there is "nothing to stop
Poetry taking its place in the centre, without thereby losing anything
of its specificity."30
The examples of encyclopedism discussed here have all been paro-
dies in varying degrees of satirical force, suggestingthat encyclopedic
efforts are vain, hopeless, or even dangerous. Nevertheless, for all the
stress on parody and satire, Flaubert, Borges, Queneau, and many
modern writers whose work can be associated with encyclopedism,
all show, by their intellectual capacities and imaginativeversatility,
that literature still does claim a place at the center of man's sym-
bolic efforts. The menippean approach seems most appropriate for
the modern writer, who is likely to stress the carnivalizationof knowl-
edge, the outlook which, through relativizing parody, exposes the
vacuity of official or fashionable "current thinking." Pynchon and
364 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

Vonnegut offer examples of this carnivalization.However, along with

the parodies, all these encyclopedic writers display at the very least a
nostalgia for the comprehensive, unfragmented view, for the vigor of
thought or the flexibility of understanding,for the qualities of knowl-
edge which have so often informed literature. Often more than such
nostalgia is in evidence, as in the case of GiintherGrass,who clearly
takes Rabelaisian delight in the multifariousnessof the cosmos and
the variety of human undertakings.One could cite Saul Bellow, A.R.
Ammons, or Italo Calvino as examples of modern writers whose grasp
of the ranges of knowledge is critical and comprehensive at the same
time. These writers continue to explore and to extend the scope of
literature'sdealings with knowledge.
In his TLS essay, Queneau pointed out that the philosophers no
longer direct what used to be called natural history; it sometimes
seems nowadays that it is the anthropologists, the psychologists, and
the sociologists who are in control of our intellectual and symbolic
grasp of the world. Many of the recent syncretistic efforts and holis-
tic approaches in criticism are to be associated with these new "sci-
ences humaines;"no doubt developments in these fields, including
"structuralism,"which is evidently the most holistic of all these new
tendencies, will have an effect on the poets' creations.31 In poetry,
as in most fields today, new paradigmsare being sought. Further
study of the tradition of the anatomy/menippea, and its relation to
the encyclopedic impulse, should provide substantiation for poets
and for critics of the claim which writers as various as Broch, Que-
neau, and WallaceStevens have so often made, even as they empha-
size the parodie: that literature provides us with a central perspective
on the fateful relations between mind and reality. In encyclopedism,
literature makes its claim to the best expression, however critical, of
the experience of knowledge, in whatever guise: "information,"
technical expertise, erudition, or Broch's Erkenntnis. The responsible -
critical - expression of that complex experience is surely one of
literature's "cognitive" values.

RONALD T. SWIGGER • University of Maryland

NOTES
1. Hermann Broch, Der Tod des Vergil, Vol. Ill Gesammelte Werke (Zurich: Rhein-
Verlag, 1958), p. 351.
2. Broch s essay on Joyce, Joyce und die Gegenwart, dating from 1932, is reprinted
in Dichten und Erkennen: Essays, 1. Bd., which is the sixth volume of the Gesammelte
Werke (1955), pp. 183-210. Elias Canetti, in a speech honoring Broch, stressed this im-
patience and its accompanying urge to comprehensiveness in maintaining that Broch is one
of the of the few "représentative Dichter" of the century: "Hermann Broch: Rede zum 50.
Geburtstag," in Hermann Broch: Perspektiven der Forschung, ed. Manfred Durzak (Miinchen:
Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1972), pp. 1 1-24. Canetti himself is certainly an author who could be
counted a contributor to encyclopedism and its critique.
3. Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: Bantam
Books, 1975 [orig. 1974, Morrow] ), pp. 296-320.
 ENCYCLOPEDISM 365

4. In "The Figure of the Youth as Virile Poet,'* Wallace Stevens suggested that poetry
be defined as " an unofficial view of being." In The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality
and the Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1965), p. 40. On Orphismand "official" views
of being, valuable material is to be found in Elizabeth Sewell's book, The Orphic Voice:
Poetry and Natural History (New Haven: Yale, 1960).
5. Northrop Frye, The Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957),
d. 311.
6.Tr. R.W. Rotsel (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis, 1973). The translation is based on a
new edition; this book, one of the most critically illuminating works ever written about
Dostoevsky, was originally published in 1929. The fourth chapter is devoted to the generic
backgrounds of Dostoevsky's poetics.
7. The long list of characteristics of the menippea appears on pp. 93-97. Bakhtin is
able to show how the menippean frame is related to techniques and perspectives usually
thought of as being modern but deriving, in fact, from Greek and Roman practices, and
their cultural foundations. His work on Rabelais should be consulted for extensive dis-
cussions of the importance of carnival: Rabelais and his World, tr. Helene Iswo Isky (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968).
8. The discussion of the anatomy is found in Anatomy of Criticism, pp. 308-314;
"specific encyclopedic forms*'are discussed on pp. 315-326. It is interesting to note that
Frye places this discussion at the juncture of literary and non-literary or discursive prose.
No doubt his notion of "conceptual rhetoric*'and his remarks on the relations between
grammarand logic should also be taken into account in any fully elaborated study of the
subject of literary encyclopedism, but this branch of the inquiry, like many of the other
ramifications of encyclopedism, must be set aside for later investigation.
9. Philip Stevick, "Novel and Anatomy: Notes Toward an Amplification of Frye,**
Criticism, 10 (1968), 153-165. In view of Bakhtin*saccount, it would appear that Stevick
was hasty in discounting the importance of Frye's discussion of the classical background
of the anatomy.
1O.Julia Kristeva's enthusiastic review of Bakhtin*sbook indicates other ways in which
the study of the anatomy/ menippea could prove useful and enlightening for the study of
the place of language and literature in modern thought: "Le mot, le dialogue et le roman,*'
in Semeibtikè: Recherches pour une Semanalyse (Paris: Eds. du Seuil, 1969), pp. 143-173.
1 1. The letter to Mrs. Tennant of Dec. 16, 1 879, from which these phrases are cited, is
quoted, along with copious additional information, in the preface to Rene' Dumesnil's two
volume edition of Bouvard et Pécuchet (Paris: Société' Les Belles Lettres, 1945), I, c, xvi,
and xxiv.
12. Their skepticism is reviewed in concise form in Raymond Queneau s introduction
to the 1947 Point Du Jour edition of the novel. The essay is also reprinted in his Batons,
Chiffres et lettres (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), pp. 97-1 24.
13. Queneau ends his introduction by citing the letter to Bou ilnet (Sept. 4, 1 850) in
which Flaubert propounded this view of the folly of settled opinion. According to Que-
neau, the letter is itself the best possible introduction to the novel.
14. On Borges*universalism, see Ronald J. Christ, The Narrow Act: Borges Art of
Allusion (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 50-54 and 192f. Roger Caillois
has classed Borges with Jules Verne, Arnold Toynbee, Saint John Perse, and other "ex-
centriques**who "n'acceptent pour absolu aucun centre de references particulier, ni local,
ni temporel." They strive to be "be'ne'ficiairesde la totalité' du monde, he'ritiersd'un hu-
manisme universel, où ils choisissent librement ce ^ui leur convient." He counts Borges
among the small number of "ces parfaits encyclopédistes encore rares, pour qui l'inven-
taire des richesses disponibles est à; a double mesure de la planète et de l'histoire.'* In
"Les Thèmes fondamentaux de J.L. Borges,*'in the Borges volume of the Cahiers de
VHerne, No. 4 (1964), p. 217. In a Borgesian romp on the word "cosmopolite,** Etiemble
argues that Borges deserves the epithet: "Un homme à tuer: J.L. Borges, cosmopolite,**
Temps Modernes, 83 (1952), 512-526.
15. Reprinted in the Cahiers de VHerne devoted to Borges, pp. 83-88.
16. The Spanish text is quoted from the edition of "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius re-
printed in Borges*Nueva Antologia Personal (Mexico, D.F.: Siglo XXI Editores, 1968),
p. 92. The translation is cited from Borges*Labyrinths, ed. Donald A. Yates and James
E. Irbv (New York: New Directions, 1962), p. 18. The translation is by Lrby.
17. Labyrinths, p. 8. Other philosophers invoked are Schopenhauer, Russell, Meinong,
and, naturally, Plato. For Borges*approaches to Berkeley, one should consult his essay,
"A New Refutation of Time,*' in Labyrinths, pp. 21 7-234; see esp. pp. 227ff.
366 COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES

18. All these texts are conveniently gathered in Labyrinths, with the exception of "The
Aleph," which can be found in the Nueva Antologia Personal The texts alluded to here are
entitled: "The Library of Babel," "Death and the Compass," "The Immortal."
19. Borges denies that literature is merely a game of combinations and variations, "verbal
algebra." See "A Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw," in Labyrinths, p. 214.
20. Queneau's works, with a few exceptions, have all been published in Paris by Gallimard:
Pierrot mon ami 1943: Exercises de stvle. 1947 : Zazie dans le Métro. 1959.
21. Queneau comments on his enterprise in the essay "Comment on devient encyclopédiste,"
in Bords: mathématiciens, précurseurs et encyclopédistes (Paris: Hermann, 1963), pp. 1 19-122.
In the same volume, see also his "Présentation de l'Encyclope'die," pp. 85-1 1 2.
22. In his introduction to Flaubert's novel, op. cit., Queneau defends Bouvard and Pécuchet
against the charge that they are merely idiots. Very little has been written about Les Enfants
du Limon. For speculations about the wisdom enunciated there, see Sainmont 's piece, "Les
Enfants du Limon et le mystère de la Redemption," Cahiers du Collège de Pataphysique,
8-9 (1953), 93-95.
23. "Richesse et limites," in Voyage en Grèce (Paris: Gallimard, 1973), pp. 97-1 04; the
essay originally appeared in Volontés, No. 4, 20 mars 1938.
24. Originally published in 1950; rev. ed. published along with Chêne et Chien (Queneau's
autobiography in verse) in the Collection Poésie, 1969.
25. op. cit., pp. 127-128.
26. In addition to Sewell's book, cited earlier, other recent works on Orphism should be
mentioned: Harold Bloom, "The Native Strain: American Orphism," in Literary Theory and
Structure, Brady, Frank, Palmer, and Price, eds. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1973), pp.
285-304; Walter A. Strauss, Descent and Return: The Orphic Theme in Modern Literature
(Cambridge: HarvardUniv. Press, 1971); and Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1972).
27. Guillaume Apollinaire, L Esprit moderne et les poètes, Mercure de France, 130
(1 décembre 1918), 385-396. The remark on the potential scope of poetry, its promise of
new "liberté' encyclopédique," is found on p. 387.
28. "Projet,"in Fendre les flots (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), p. 46. This poem is to be com-
pared with another with the same title at the end of the volume, beginning "Je parlerai
d'une voix plus claire" suggesting a renunciation of the excesses of metaphor in favor of
things as they are.
29. Like Flaubert, for science but skeptical or amused by the prétentions of scientists.
See Queneau's preface to Bouvard et Pécuchet, op. cit., p. xxiii (also in Bâtons, Chiffres et
lettres,p. 121).
30. "Science and Poetry," TLS, No. 3422, Sept. 28, 1967, pp. 863-864. The quotation
ends the essay.
31. Edward W. Said has associated what he calls the cybernetic hope of the structural-
ists and related thinkers with the encyclopedic tradition: "It also finds its way imaginatively
and pedagogically into Browne's Garden of Cyrus, the dictionaries, encyclopedias, anatomies,
catalogues, and universal grammarsof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Flaubert's
Dictionnaire des idées reçues, and BorgesM leph. " "Abecedarian culturae: Structuralism,
Absence, Writing," TriQuarterly, 20 (Winter 1971), 51-52.