The preservation and systematization of the information we have about the history and the development of literature over the centuries must be preserved for the cultural heritage of mankind. Specialized encyclopedias presenting literary history set themselves this difficult task.
There are many approaches and different views on the categories under which authors and their works should be considered in such specialized encyclopedias.
The most complete and comprehensive, although the most difficult to implement, is the approach to literary history, which traces the development of national literatures and world literature as a whole process. This kind of literary history contains all the authors of the different periods of the development of the respective literature, all the literary schools, movements, currents and varieties, presenting at the same time the connecting things about the individual authors, as well as the specific features and characteristics of each creator’s work . In this way, literature is revealed in development, as a process. Of course, the compiler’s criteria also play a significant role, but this condition is inevitable for any type of encyclopedia. However, this approach to literary history offers the greatest opportunities for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
The Classical Literary Encyclopedia fully represents every national literature – Western European literatures (English, French, German, Italian, etc.), Scandinavian literatures (Danish, Swedish, Finnish, etc.), American literature, Latin American literatures, Slavic literatures (Russian, Polish, Serbian, Slovenian, Slovak, etc.), Balkan literatures (Turkish, Greek, Albanian), Arabic and Persian literature, Indian literature, Eastern literatures (Chinese, Japanese, etc.). We must not forget the ancient literature – ancient Greek and Roman, which are the basis of human civilization.
Each of these literatures is presented with authors from different periods – from medieval to modern. French literature with authors such as Francois Villon, Moliere, Honore de Balzac, Marcel Proust, Albert Camus, Italian literature with Boccaccio, Dante, Umberto Eco, German literature with Johann W. Goethe, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Gunther Grass , English literature with William Shakespeare, George Byron, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Iris Murdoch, American literature with Mark Twain, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Russian literature with Alexander S. Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoyevsky , Mikhail Bulgakov, Ilf and Petrov, Polish literature with Adam Mickiewicz, Henrikh Sienkiewicz, Serbian literature with Ivo Andrić, Branislav Nushić, Czech literature with Jaroslav Hasek, Bulgarian literature with Hristo Botev, Ivan Vazov, Peyo Yavorov, Elin Pelin, Yordan Yovkov, Dimitar Talev, Indian literature with Rabindranath Tagore, Persian literature with Omar Khayyam, Japanese literature with Abe Kobo, Kenzaburo Oe, Yasunari Kawabata, etc. – such a list could be huge.
This shows how wide a range this approach covers world literature. Adding the articles on the various schools and currents, the picture becomes even more complete. The classic literary encyclopedia also includes information on the most significant works – from the Iliad and the Odyssey to The Three Musketeers and War and Peace – as well as their main characters.
The information presented must be devoid of ratings. Only characteristics of a given author, movement or work are allowed. Their very inclusion in the literary encyclopedia and their allocated place is a kind of assessment of their importance in the overall literary process.
The classic specialized literary encyclopedia makes it possible to present as wide a range of knowledge as possible. Of course, such an epoch-making work is the work of a very large collective of authors. For example, LAROUSSE‘s two-volume literary encyclopedia.
Dictionnaire historique thematique et technique des litteratures impresses not only with its extremely rich content, but also with the list of authors, in which the names of specialists in various literatures, teachers in the world’s most prestigious universities.
There are also specialized encyclopedias of individual literary types and genres. This type of encyclopedia, for example, examines only authors of novels (history of the Bulgarian novel, of the English theater, etc.), only authors of fantasy, etc. Ideally, a history of fantasy should begin with the roots of the genre, which emerged from the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, and Jorge Luis Borges. A suitable place will be allocated to the first fantasy work that became known worldwide – the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” by the English writer and linguist John RR Tolkien. His work, which today inspires many other writers, musicians and artists, filmmakers, popularized the genre as a whole. Other famous authors who will be included in such an encyclopedia are Robert Howard and Ursula LeGuin.
A specialized encyclopedia of literature can also cover only a separate direction or trend – for example, history of symbolism (in particular, history of Russian symbolism, history of French symbolists, etc.).
There are some undeniably interesting types of specialized encyclopedias of literature such as titrology and the history of paratexts. The information they store complements and expands the knowledge of literature as a whole, but in practice it is contained in the original, unfragmented version of literary history. This fact largely calls into question the meaning of the existence of such independent scientific disciplines. There is an opportunity to know only the title, prologue and epilogue, but not the entire text. Addressing the issues of title can cover many issues – there are definitions of title as a perspective on the whole work. The main purpose of the title is to describe the content of the work, to suggest the plot and main theme. In many cases, it contains a riddle or some kind of allusion, is easy to remember or is some kind of linguistic pun. The historical development of the title can also be traced – from the voluminous and long titles of the classical era, through its poetic use and focus on fragments rather than content in the Symbolists, to today’s significantly shorter and synthesized titles. The logical content of the title can connect the work both with a legend and mythical tradition, and with a certain genre – historical, criminal, love, etc. Sometimes the author himself changes the title of one of his works in his new editions, sometimes it is just a quote. Often the title is determined by purely commercial interests. Too much self-serving delving into paratexts and titles can lead to some “pseudo-discoveries” that would surprise not only readers, but even authors. On the other hand, a classical literary specialized encyclopedia should not underestimate these problems, but should include them in itself along with all the other issues it deals with.
The classic literary encyclopedia also devotes a great deal of attention to the history of handwriting – something that can also be said of the history of the landscape. They are an integral part of it, and their existence as separate, self-serving sciences is devoid of common sense. Such “parcelling” of knowledge carries risks. Easily the main goal – the history of literature – can be displaced by erudition, which impresses, but has lost the general overall view of literature as a process.
The History of Prosthetics explores previously uncharted territory and brings a new approach to the systematization and examination of works. Combined with the classic type of specialized encyclopedia, it can expand and enrich our view of world literature. However, it is not always applicable (for example, in the cycle “If they could talk” by Y. Yovkov, the prosthetic is absent).
The history of the actant can be considered as much a part of the history of literature as of criticism. With it, the line between them is thin, and turning it into a purely scientific discipline can only do harm. A mere statistical enumeration of the actors would hardly be of much use.
Fragmentation of knowledge in this case is generally a harmful phenomenon that does not enrich or facilitate the study of world literature. It implies an excessive delving into a single insignificant part of the entire vast knowledge and a very superficial (or completely absent) knowledge of the remaining areas.
That is why, when compiling a specialized encyclopedia of literature, the classic approach with a single huge category (divided only by national literatures and containing everything in itself) is preferable. To be complete, such an encyclopedia inevitably gives due credit to all the problems which the newly emerging disciplines arbitrarily appropriate. A comprehensive literary encyclopedia implies a dignified representation of world literature, with nothing significant overlooked or rejected at the expense of another.
| IVA GEORGIEVA |
| deputy director, |
| leading editor of the Bulgarian Encyclopedia “A-Z” |
