The Science Called Listology

The Unknown Life of a List

A list, as a word or a phenomenon, is very inconspicuous. How long has it been with us? In the English language, the word “list” in the required sense was recorded around 1600 [1]. The meaning of enumeration was given to it by the Italians, who were forming how to account for goods and money [2]. Thus, something that once denoted a border or a piece of fabric began to denote series.

Despite its honorable age, this phenomenon has not received formal research attention throughout its history. At least, it was only in 2017 that a group of medievalists* received a grant to conduct scientific research on the topic of lists. A year before that, they decided to apply with the theme “Lists in Literature and Culture: Towards a Listology” [3].

The New Science Appeared

Thus, since 2017, Listology has ceased to be a typo in the word Histology [4] and began to form as an independent science. The result of these works was at least 10 articles [5] as well as the book “Forms of List-Making” [6].

It is this book that I am currently reading, and thanks to it, the previous publication about Octavian Augustus appeared. Read it if you want to come up with some items that will make you a way to deification. And now it's time to follow back to Listology.

Judging by the dates for which the grant was provided, the research was supposed to end back in 2022. However, it turned out that the project team continues to work on the new materials creation, developing the old stories. In 2022–2023, the researchers published three more books for the interested readers:

• Enlistment [7],
• Literary Lists [8],
• A Narratological Approach to Lists in Detective Fiction [9].

Is There a Place to Read More About the Listology Research?

There is a site on the Internet that is named after the new science: https://listology.blog/. It is led by Eva von Contzen. It seems that she is the head of the group that received the research grant. Several co-authors help her with the blog. External contributors who wish to write on the topic of lists can also become co-authors. You need to write an email to the blog authors. Articles are not published frequently: three or four times a year. Would you like to make connection and try? 🙂

Won't Listology Fade?

Although the project team has published four whole books, won't everything die down if the enthusiasm of this group fades? I can't make predictions, but I have a faint optimism that Listology is gaining interest. A couple of well-known universities have published books dedicated to the study of lists in recent years.

The first is the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. From 2019 to 2023, three books were published under the general title 'The Power of Lists in the Middle Ages' (Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge) [10], [11], [12].

The second is the University of Cambridge. Last year, they published the book “Synopses and Lists” [13].

No Story, Only Science?

Lists don't gain the scientific attention only. People happened to publish several general books on the topic. Read about them in one of the first in this blog, “Books about lists”.

It is also amusing that the first developed ways to study lists from a scientific perspective came from medievalists and not linguists. This leaves its mark on what kind of books are obtained on the subject. It was also interesting to trace the path of developing interest in the new science in Europe. Thus, unnoticed, the study of an invisible but massive phenomenon is growing.

* Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist. [14].

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List of Links

[1] “List” from Online Etymology Dictionary
[2] “Luca Pacioli” from Wikipedia
[3] “Lists in Literature and Culture” from the Universität Freiburg website
[4] “The Lancet 1912-08-24” from Internet Archive
[5] “Publikationen” from the section “Lists in Literature and Culture” from the Universität Freiburg website
[6] Roman Alexander Barton, Julia Böckling, Sarah Link, Anne Rüggemeier “Forms of List-Making: Epistemic Literary and Visual Enumeration” ISBN 978-3-030-76970-3
[7] Eva von Contzen, James Simpson “Enlistment: Lists in Medieval and Early Modern Literature” ISBN 978-0-8142-8220-5
[8] Roman Alexander Barton, Eva von Contzen, Anne Rüggemeier “Literary Lists: A Short History of Form and Function” ISBN 978-3-031-28372-7
[9] Sarah Link “A Narratological Approach to Lists in Detective Fiction” ISBN 978-3-031-33227-2
[10] Claire Angotti, Pierre Chastang, Vincent Debiais, Laura Kendrick “Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge – I” ISBN 979-10-351-0317-0
[11] Étienne Anheim, Laurent Feller, Madeleine Jeay, Giuliano Milani “Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge – II” ISBN 979-10-351-0574-7
[12] Éléonore Andrieu, Pierre Chastang, Fabrice Delivré, Joseph Morsel, Valérie Theis “Le pouvoir des listes au Moyen Âge – III” ISBN 979-10-351-0866-3
[13] Teresa Bernheimer, Ronny Vollandt “Synopses and Lists: Textual Practices in the Pre-Modern World” ISBN 978-1-80511-148-1
[14] “Medieval Studies” from Wikipedia