ABSTRACT
Certain literary texts display traits of essay, epic and menippea, but go beyond these forms into the domain of the encyclopaedia itself. This “encyclopaedic” text I have termed the “fictional encyclopaedia.” Ultimately, the fictional encyclopaedia is distinguished from the neighbouring forms by its roots in sacred texts. A desire or nostalgia for knowledge of paradise and hell is a the centre of works-besides Milton’s epic-such as Dante’s Commedia. Goethe’s Faust. Melville’s Moby Dick. Pound’s Cantos. Joyce’s Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Sollers’ Paradis. Mann’s Dr Faustus. Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and Latin American texts such as Severo Sarduy’s Cobra and Jose Lezama Lima’s Paradiso.
