Abstract
Lists represent a primitive and exemplary use of literacy, but, being neither prose nor verse, they occur in literature as a disruption to the reading regime. A list makes an implicit truth-claim that subverts prose, particularly critical prose. Lists imply the closure of the “great conversation” and the disarticulation of all grand narratives. This paper takes an eclectic approach, surveying a range of literary uses of the list, considering its didactic and parodic functions (ironic truth-claims), and the sense of orientalism that frequently emerges when lists appear in western literary contexts. The distinction between prose and poetry as two functions of language is both clarified and complicated by lists, which employ the everyday language of the one, but with the compression and emphasis on discontinuity of the other.
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