This Palgrave Pivot offers a brief history of the literary list and its functions. The study argues that the classical poetological concept of enumeration has been a constant feature of prose, poetry and drama but that its uses have changed over time. It draws a trajectory that takes into account the rises of empiricism, novelistic realism, language skepticism and postmodernism, discussing a wide range of works from ancient epic catalogues to lists in avant-garde drama. The final chapter proposes a ‘listology’, – a short formal systematics of the poetic functions of enumeration.  weiterlesen