Reviewed by:

• Enlistment: Lists in Medieval and Early Modern Literature ed. by Eva Von Contzen and James Simpson
• Michael Van Dussen

Lists embedded in ancient, medieval, or early modern narratives are often regarded as the fly-over bits, artless filler, or unwelcome interruptions of narrative sequence. In other contexts—like indices or standalone groupings of disparate items—lists may be perused more for their practical function than for the logic of their arrangement or their hermeneutic possibilities. Enlistment takes up the practice of listing to regard lists as 'form[s] or way[s] of thinking' (p. 8). Lists can include or exclude; they can give the sense that a knowledge set is complete and circumscribed, or (on the contrary) limitless and expansive; they may suggest dispassionate transparency while at the same time obscuring the politics of the compiler's project. As the chapters in this volume show, scrutiny of enumerative or sequential patterns (which is how the term 'list' is regarded in its broadest sense in this collection) reveals how lists enlist readers in the process of making sense of them.

In the Introduction, the editors briefly survey prior scholarship on lists, with emphasis on medieval English literary contexts, and deploy theoretical models from other contexts to suggest how lists can be studied in terms of their 'affordances' and as Denkformen (forms or ways of thinking). The following chapters are then introduced according to how they participate in four conceptual (and not strictly binary) pairings: in/completeness, dis/ordering knowledge, un/familiarity, and boredom/play. [End Page 77]

Alexis Kellner Becker studies the extensive list of things a reeve should know in the Old English Gerefa, a guide for a reeve of an estate. Gerefa, 'a pre-Conquest text, imagining and preserving a pre-feudal reeve, redacted into and preserved in a post-Conquest legal manuscript' (p. 17), is self-consciously framed by an author who admits ignorance of the reeve's body of knowledge but who nevertheless presents it to his post-Conquest reader. Andrew James Johnston (Chapter Two) then discusses the presentation of the Old English Widsith as three consecutive lists of rulers and peoples. Johnston finds the concept of 'global modernism' to be a fruitful way to understand how the poet-narrator brings disparate temporalities, cultures, and 'antiquities' into conversation or even competition.

In Chapter Three, Kathryn Mogk Wagner examines Christian lists of God's names as responses to the impossibility of naming the unnameable. Such lists could be rhythmic and incantatory, and the words themselves, coming from several languages and traditions, could be distorted beyond understanding. Their ancient and convoluted transmission also gave rise to variance and accretion, and the list form conveyed a fitting sense of inexhaustibility. Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Chapter Four) treats the Middle English Benjamin Minor, a contemplative text that uses a diagrammatic structure to allegorize the list of Jacob's children in Gen. 35:23-26. The result is an elaborate genealogical list as well as a contemplative treatise that 'organize[s] knowledge and […] facilitate[s] the process of the reader's intellectual and spiritual growth' (p. 77).

Martha Rust turns to the history of listing the four rivers of Paradise (Chapter Five). In this highly associative study, the rivers may come to represent the virtues or serve as a heuristic for thinking about Christ's wounds. Epic catalogues in Middle English literature are next taken up by Eva von Contzen (Chapter Six). Her survey of lists of authorities on the Trojan War in Middle English poetry reveals a skepticism toward these authorities that appears to increase over time. In Chapter Seven, Wolfram R. Keller regards Gavin Douglas' Palice of Honour as a response to the disharmony of Chaucer's dream poetry, particularly in the House of Fame. Keller offers highly schematic readings of both The House of Fame and Palice of Honour, discussing both in terms of medieval cognitive theory and the management of courtly households. In constructing his Palice, Douglas enumerates a series of lists characterized by...

审阅者：

• 入伍：中世纪和早期现代文学列表编辑。作者：伊娃·冯·康岑和詹姆斯·辛普森
• 迈克尔·范·杜森

古代、中世纪或早期现代叙事中嵌入的列表通常被认为是跳过的片段、朴素的填充物或不受欢迎的叙事顺序中断。在其他上下文中（例如索引或不同项目的独立分组），列表可能更多地因其实际功能而不是其排列逻辑或解释可能性而被仔细阅读。入伍采取了列出的做法，将列表视为“思维的形式或方式”（第 8 页）。列表可以包含或排除；它们可以给人一种知识集是完整的和有限制的，或者（相反）无限和广阔的感觉；它们可能会建议冷静的透明度，同时模糊编译器项目的政治性。正如本书各章所示，对枚举或顺序模式（这就是本书中术语“列表”的最广泛含义的理解）的仔细审查揭示了读者在理解列表的过程中如何理解它们。

在引言中，编辑们简要调查了先前关于列表的学术研究，重点是中世纪英语文学背景，并部署了来自其他背景的理论模型，以建议如何根据列表的“可供性”和 Denkformen（列表的形式或方式）来研究列表。思维）。然后根据它们如何参与四个概念（而不是严格的二元）配对来介绍以下章节：完整/无序知识，不熟悉/熟悉和无聊/游戏。[完第77页]

亚历克西斯·凯尔纳·贝克尔 (Alexis Kellner Becker) 在古英语《Gerefa》（庄园里夫指南）中研究了里夫应了解的内容。Gerefa，“一部征服前的文本，想象并保留了封建前的里夫，经过编辑并保存在征服后的法律手稿中”（第 17 页），是由一位承认对里夫的无知的作者有意识地构建的。知识体系，但他仍然将其呈现给征服后的读者。安德鲁·詹姆斯·约翰斯顿（第二章）然后讨论了古英语威德西斯作为三个连续的统治者和人民列表的呈现方式。约翰斯顿发现“全球现代主义”的概念是一种富有成效的方式，可以理解诗人兼叙述者如何将不同的时间性、文化和“古代”带入对话甚至竞争中。

在第三章中，凯瑟琳·莫克·瓦格纳（Kathryn Mogk Wagner）研究了基督教的上帝名字列表，作为对无法命名之物的回应。这样的列表可能是有节奏的和咒语性的，而来自多种语言和传统的单词本身可能会被扭曲得难以理解。它们古老而复杂的传播也导致了变化和增长，而列表的形式传达了一种恰如其分的取之不尽、用之不竭的感觉。苏珊娜·康克林·阿克巴里（Suzanne Conklin Akbari）（第四章）论述了中古英语的《小本杰明》（Benjamin Minor），这是一篇沉思性的文本，使用图表结构来寓言创世纪 35:23-26 中雅各布的孩子们的名单。其结果是一份详尽的家谱列表以及一篇沉思的论文，“组织知识并……促进读者智力和精神成长的过程”（第 77 页）。

玛莎·鲁斯特转向列出天堂四河的历史（第五章）。在这项高度联想的研究中，河流可能代表美德或作为思考基督伤口的启发。接下来，伊娃·冯·康岑 (Eva von Contzen) 开始研究中古英语文学中的史诗目录（第六章）。她对中古英语诗歌中有关特洛伊战争的权威名单的调查揭示了对这些权威的怀疑随着时间的推移似乎在增加。在第七章中，沃尔夫拉姆·R·凯勒（Wolfram R. Keller）将加文·道格拉斯（Gavin Douglas）的荣誉宫视为对乔叟梦想诗的不和谐的回应，特别是在名人堂中。凯勒对《名人堂》和《荣誉宫》进行了高度示意性的阅读，从中世纪认知理论和宫廷家庭的管理方面进行了讨论。在构建他的Palice时，道格拉斯列举了一系列列表，其特征是......