Routledge Revivals The Fictional Encyclopaedia First published in 1990, this work offers an analysis of the phenom- enon of encyclopaedism in literature. Hilary Clark develops the theory of an encyclopaedic form in the interests of making clear distinctions between the realist narrative form and that of the encyclopaedic-paro- dic or fictional encyclopaedia. She makes clear the special links that non-realist, parodic fictions have with the forms of essay, Menippean satire and epic, and indeed with the encyclopaedia itself. The study pays particular attention to the way in which literary encyclopaedism has flourished in the twentieth century, with special reference to the works of James Joyce, Ezra Pound and Philippe Sollers. 234x156 HB The Fictional Encyclopaedia Joyce, Pound, Sollers Hilary Clark First published in 1990 by Garland This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1990 Hilary Clark All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact. A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 0824000064 ISBN 13: 978-0-415-66833-0 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-80479-7 (ebk) THE FICTIONAL ENCYCLOPAEDIA Joyce, Pound, Sollers Hilary Clark Copyright © 1990 by Hilary Clark All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Clark, Hilary. The fictional encyclopaedia: Joyce, Pound, Sollers/Hilary Clark, p. cm.—(Garland studies in comparative literature) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8240-0006-4 (alk. paper) 1. Joyce, James, 1882-1941. Finnegans wake. 2. Joyce, James, 1882-1941— Knowledge and learning. 3. Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972. Cantos. 4. Pound, Ezra, 1885-1972—Knowledge and learning. 5. Sollers, Philippe, 1936-. Paradis. 6. Sollers, Philippe, 1936-.—Knowledge and learning. 7. Encyclopedias and dictionaries in literature. 8. Literature, Comparative—English and French. 9. Literature, Comparative—French and English. 10. Literary form. I. Title. II. Series. PR6019.09F59348 1990 823 .912—dc20 90-38188 Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America CONTENTS Introduction Chapter One: Genre, Mode and the Encyclopaedia 3 Genre and mode 3 The essay 6 The Menippean satire 8 The epic 10 Chapter Two: The Encyclopaedia 17 Introduction 17 The encyclopaedia and the totalization of knowledge 20 The encyclopaedia and time 22 The encyclopaedia and other texts 23 Ideology and writing 26 Chapter Three: The Fictional Encyclopaedia 35 Introduction 35 Fictional encyclopaedic paradoxes 36 The fictional encyclopaedia and time 39 The fictional encyclopaedia and other texts 40 Writing 43 Formal consequences of the encyclopaedic paradoxes 43 iv Chapter Four: Finnegans Wake 47 Wordplay 47 Problems of totalization 53 Images of completion 64 Time and timelessness 70 The Book and books 77 Chapter Five: The Cantos 89 The canto form 89 Problems of totalization 95 Paradise or periplum 106 Time and timelessness 115 "In principio verbum": textuality and speech 120 Chapter Six: Paradis 129 Non-punctuation 129 Problems of totalization 135 Images of completion 151 Time and timelessness 158 "Pancyclopédie": the Book and books 160 Conclusion 171 Afterword 177 Bibliography 181 INTRODUCTION Many of the most enduring literary texts are encyclopaedic in nature. Critics have given this phenomenon a number of names, speaking of an encyclopaedic form, encyclopaedic narrative, the encyclopaedic Book, an encyclopaedic impulse, an "encyclopoétique."1 Critics have applied the epithet "encyclopaedic" to novels, to poetry, to mixed forms such as the anatomy or Menippean satire, and to the autoportrait.2 Despite the variety of their responses, these critics have all noted a similar literary "fact." However, they have not analyzed encyclopaedism in literature for its own sake, but rather mentioned it in passing, as something taken for granted to exist The precise nature of the phenomenon, however, remains unclear. For example, are we talking about a literary genre or a mode of literary presentation? If a genre, what other genres are related to it? Does the encyclopaedic tradition have any bearing on the problem? We must focus upon such questions in order to look at literary encyclopaedism in its own right. In this study, we will investigate the nature of what we shall call the "fictional encyclopaedia." Edward Mendelson, in his articles "Encyclopaedic Narrative from Dante to Pynchon" and "Gravity’s Encyclopaedia”3 writes about a genre of encyclopaedic narrative, a genre having only a handful of members from over the centuries: Dante’s Commedia. Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Goethe’s Faust. Melville’s Mobv Dick. Joyce’s Ulvsses and Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. This genre, whose members are highly significant for their respective national literary traditions, exhibits a set of special formal traits. "Near- encyclopaedias" do not fulfil all the formal conditions and do not occupy a special historical/cultural position. According to Mendelson, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Cien años de soledad is such a "near-encyclopaedia." Mendelson’s view does not take into account the great number of works that we sense to be encyclopaedic in nature. When we say that a work we have just read is "encyclopaedic," we usually mean literally that the work encircles or includes all human knowledge. This is surely to say more than that the work fulfils certain fixed generic conditions--for example, that it contain a discussion of statecraft, feature giants and provide a history of languages, as Mendelson would have it. The term "encyclopaedic" should not be so broad that it loses descriptive precision; however, it should not be so narrow, as in Mendelson’s "genre," that it excludes many eligible works. We can counter the narrowness of an exclusively generic approach to the problem if we also develop the idea that the encyclopaedic text foregrounds the functioning of a certain mode, potentially present in all texts, but in some literary genres more important, and in encyclopaedic texts dominant.4 This is something like the idea of an encyclopaedic form developed by Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism.5 In his theory of fictional modes, Frye imagines two forms at work throughout literary history: an encylopaedic or continuous form and an episodic or discontinuous form, each playing against the other. The encyclopaedic form, embracing a continuous vision of a culture, depends on the episodic forms (based on discontinuous moments of vision) out of which it is built; and the episodic forms likewise take their meaning from the overarching circle of vision which is their context For Frye, sacred scripture (or the "Great Code") is paradigmatic for encyclopaedic form; this is built out of, and in turn gives sense to, the episodic forms of the parable, prophecy and prayer. Frye’s dialectical notion of encyclopaedic form would seem to contradict the simpler generic notion of