The project LISTLIT - Lists in Literature and Culture: Towards a Listology researches the uses and functions of lists over time and across a wide variety of genres. As a project conducted by literary scholars, the focus is on literary genres mostly, but visual examples (paintings, films, graphic novels, and others) and new media (Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest) are taken into account as well. Lists abound in our everyday lives and are usually made for very mundane and simple purposes: to remember something or to help structuring one's duties (shopping lists, to do lists). It is exactly this simplicity that makes the form so versatile and useful in many other contexts as well. Literary texts are the perfect example of how the list as a basic form can be transformed into aesthetic vignettes. The impact of lists in literary texts has been underestimated. Conventionally, lists are often considered to be an obstacle to the reader and the flow of reading, difficult to make sense of and thus a burden. If one changes the perspective and looks at lists in literary texts as key features of a novel, short story, or play, a completely different picture emerges: in that picture, the list is crucial because it invites the reader to read differently and ultimately to think differently: rather than 'following' a plot, lists make us halt the reading and can open up other spaces; lists can provide access into structures of thoughts (memories, thinking patterns), they can reveal surprising connections because one cannot help but put the items of a list into some context and thus create coherence between the items. In the project, the researchers look at literary texts that range from ancient and medieval epic, the Victorian novel, the detective novel, and blank fiction to contemporary literature and graphic novels. While the form of the list remains essentially the same over the centuries, the functions of the list change because the simple form allows for absorbing - and reflecting on - ways of seeing and perceiving the world that are prevalent in a given period. The medieval period, for instance, is characterized by an encyclopedic approach to knowledge, which we also find in the lists; they are exuberant and strive for completeness. Postmodern lists, by contrast, give credit to the openness and changeability of meaning; they verge towards a more chaotic or playful, nonsensical mode. In taking the form of the list serious, the project highlights the power and prevalence of a seemingly simple device. The research is highly relevant for society because it lays bare also the deeply political dimensions of the list: lists seem to present us with objective truths while they conceal the exact methods of selection and also the role of authorship. Lists can thus influence the perception of the world in problematic ways; their principles of order can be used to marginalize individuals or groups and to empower others. In literary texts, authors frequently draw our attention to this political dimension and thus help us to approach lists - both in literary texts and in real life - more critically. The overall objectives of the project are to identify and interpret the manifold forms of lists, trace their functions, which change depending on the genre and the period, over time, and to problematise the form as a potentially politically powerful instrument.
