Table Of ContentENCYCLOPEDIC AESTHETICS:
SCIENCE, SALVATION, AND STORYTELLING
IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
by
Jeffrey Turco
August 2009
© 2009 Jeffrey Turco
ENCYCLOPEDIC AESTHETICS:
SCIENCE, SALVATION, AND STORYTELLING
IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Jeffrey, Ph. D.
Cornell University 2009
My dissertation, “Encyclopedic Aesthetics: Science, Salvation, and Storytelling in the
Thirteenth Century,” deals with the idea of the encyclopedia in thirteenth-century
vernacular narrative, and is a contribution to the history of secularization. I combine
theoretical approaches to genre, literary reception, and political ideology with my
philological grounding in Middle High German, Old Norse, and Italian in order to
trace the tension between competing encyclopedic discourses (sacred and secular,
foreign and native, Christian and pagan, Latin and vernacular) in literary narrative. I
demonstrate how secular, vernacular authors invoke the framework of the medieval
encyclopedia in order to legitimate the appropriation of heathen scientia for the new,
this-worldly ethic of non-clerical audiences. I show how encyclopedism operates as a
rhetorical strategy within three distinct political and cultural contexts: the
parliamentary Icelandic Commonwealth, the feudal court of Thuringia, and the Italian
city-state. The first of four main chapters investigates the merger of imported Christian
and native pagan pedagogical traditions in the Edda, the mythographic-poetic treatise
of the Icelandic chieftain Snorri Sturluson, as an allegorical negotiation of Icelandic
identity under Norwegian hegemony. A second chapter on the Edda relocates the
Norse sapiential tradition within the ideology of Snorri's mythographic ethnography.
The third chapter reads Dante’s dialogue with sacred authority in the Paradiso as a
rehabilitation of the “failed encyclopedism” that leads to Adam’s spiritual exile—a
mirror of Dante’s political exodus. A final chapter on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s
Parzival and the technology of the book argues that Wolfram inverts the structure of
the medieval encyclopedia—a Christian moral framework for Greco-Arabic science—
in order to recover the world of heathen learning for the lay morality of his Christian
audience. I conclude that encyclopedism can no longer be understood as the mere
“reception” or insertion of encyclopedic discourses in narrative texts, but should be
seen as a new cultural meta-narrative of secular authority framing the explosive
development of vernacular literature in a long thirteenth century.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Jeff Turco was born and raised in Middletown, Connecticut. He dropped out of high
school when he was sixteen, attended Middlesex Community College for two years,
and received his B.A. in German and Philosophy at Connecticut College. Before
coming to Cornell, he spent four years in Germany and Italy, finally leaving Rome for
Ithaca (an epic decision, but not one that ultimately withstands scrutiny). He studied at
the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, in Tübingen, Heidelberg, and in Reykjavík. He
has held two Fulbright grants and is editor and translator, respectively, of two future
volumes of Islandica from Cornell University Press. He has served as Visiting Curator
of the the Fiske Icelandic Collection in the Division of Rare and Manuscript
Collections at Cornell, and is the founder the annual Fiske Conference on Medieval
Icelandic Studies. His graduate studies in German and Medieval Studies resulted in the
present dissertation. While working towards the PhD, he taught German, Comparative
Literature, and Italian Studies for three years at the University of Western Ontario. He
currently teaches German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Alberta.
iii
For Thomas Melbert, Professor Emeritus of English, Middlesex Community College,
Middletown, Connecticut –
Encyclopedist
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
According to a recent study, the average person says “thank you” over one hundred
times a day. At that rate, a thorough accounting of my actual debts would surely take
no more than a week?
In lieu of such bookkeeping, I hope my creditors (they know who they are) will
settle for somewhat less. First and foremost, I would like to thank my friend and
mentor Thomas D. Hill for a generosity of mind and matter that at times borders on
the pathological. Perhaps the most important thing Tom has taught me and others is
that it is possible to be a world-class scholar and a human being. I would also like to
thank my Doktorvater, Art Groos, (affectionately known as “Art Vader”), who taught
me a thing or two about how to read, which is no small matter. Pete Wetherbee
deserves thanks for afternoons in his office with the radio on, espresso in hand, and the
Vita Nuova on our minds. Wayne Harbert (who taught the single best course I took at
Cornell) tolerated with characteristic humor and good nature my fledgling attempts in
Germanic linguistics.
It would be difficult to acknowledge my full debt to the late John King,
Professor of German at Connecticut College. John died before his time in 1995, but
not before he somehow managed to get himself to campus once a week to teach his
last course, an independent study with me on Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg. It is one
thing to talk about devotion to teaching; it is another to teach on borrowed time in
between chemotherapy sessions. Despite (or perhaps because of) the subject of our
discussions, John never let death have any sovereignty over his—or my—thoughts.
My friend Robert Baldwin (Art History, Connecticut College) has been a
source of support and kayaking trips for many years now. Joe Harris at Harvard and
Kirsten Wolf at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have encouraged me in more
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traditional but no less appreciated ways. Peter Zelinka and Reidar Maliks, the friends
of my youth and adulthood, have been my immediate sources of inspiration. The same
can be said of my father, whom his brother once referred to covertly (but correctly) as
a national treasure.
I'm suddenly at a loss for how to thank my family—my mother, father, and
sister—for all they do. That would make this a multi-volume undertaking, and surely
they have been patient enough already waiting for just this one. However, I would like
to thank my mother for making me explain my project to her.
My dissertation was inadvertently inspired many years ago when I discovered
my first mentor, Thomas Melbert, midway through the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
It was Tom who got me interested in the idea of universal knowledge, not least by his
own humbling example. Tom had the great foresight to warn me against becoming a
medievalist, “because if you're serious about it, you'll have to devote your whole life
to it.” Since I failed to heed his warning so soundly, I hope he won't mind if I dedicate
this dissertation to him.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Biographical Sketch iii
Dedication iv
Acknowledgments v
Table of Contents vii
List of Illustrations viii
Introduction: Encyclopedic Aesthetics:
Science, Salvation, and Storytelling
in the Thirteenth Century 1-23
Chapter 1: On the Shoulders of Frost Giants:
Encyclopedic Poetics in Snorri Sturluson’s Edda 24-49
Chapter 2: They Might Not Be Giants:
The Sapiential Tradition, Ideology,
and Snorri's Mythographic Ethnography 50-146
1. What’s so Big about Giants?
The jötnar of Snorra Edda
2. Gods and Giants? / Gods as Giants
3. Wit, Wisdom, and the Sapiential Arms-Race
Chapter 3: Dante: “Bound with Love in a Single Volume” 147-202
1. Making the World Safe for Encyclopedism
in Paradiso XXVI
2. Encyclopedism: Old Schools and New Styles
3. Cavalcanti’s Counter-Encyclopedia of the Heart
Chapter 4: Per ordinem: “Getting it Straight” in Wolfram’s Parzival 203-269
1. Compilatio: The Audience as Encyclopedist
2. nune mac ich disen heiden vom getouften niht
gescheiden: Heathen and Christian, Compiled
3. From boge to buoch:
Wolfram’s “Bow-Metaphor”—a Codex-Metaphor?
Epilogue: From Knowledge to Knowing (and Back) 270-272
Bibliography 273-290
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration 1: Gylfi (Gangleri) questioning his three
informants in Gylfaginning (Icelandic, ca. 1300).
From the Uppsala manuscript of the Prose Edda,
Uppsala University Library, DG II, f. 26v. 24
Illustration 2: “Thor and Skrýmir” from The Heroes
of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology.
By A.&E. Keary. Illustrated by C.E. Brock.
Macmillan & Co. 1870 50
Illustration 3: A present-day giant in Seattle,WA,
occupies “the margins of the known world”
underneath a busy traffic bridge. Photo: Michael
Hanson for The New York Times 111
Illustration 4: The parchment making process 256
Illustration 5: The medieval book-sewing frame 260
Illustration 6: The medieval book-sewing frame 260
Illustration 7: The bound volume 261
Illustration 8: The bound volume 261
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