Encyclopedic novel

The encyclopedic novel is a literary concept popularised by Edward Mendelson in two 1976 essays ("Encyclopedic Narrative" and "Gravity's Encyclopedia"). In Mendelson's formulation, encyclopedic novels "attempt to render the full range of knowledge and beliefs of a national culture, while identifying the ideological perspectives from which that culture shapes and interprets its knowledge". He states that "[b]ecause they are the products of an epic in which the world's knowledge is larger than any one person can encompass, they necessarily make extensive use of synecdoche". Other qualities include "the full account of at least one technology or science" and the display of "an encyclopedia of literary styles, ranging from the most primitive and anonymous levels ... to the most esoteric of high styles". Key to Mendelson's definition is the proximity between the era portrayed in the novel and the era of the novel's writing (as in, for example, James Joyce's Ulysses, and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow). In more general terms, the encyclopedic novel is a long, complex work of fiction that incorporates extensive information (which is sometimes fictional itself), often from specialized disciplines of science and the humanities. Orderly plot structures are often absent.