This seminar circles around the phenomenon of encyclopedic learning in the Latin Middle Ages, thereby opening up paths for exploring medieval perspectives on the world and the order of things. Attention will focus on physically concrete witnesses to these perspectives: manuscript copies of compendia that collect and re-present useful knowledge. Often carefully structured, regularly illustrated with images as well as astonishingly complex and artful schematic diagrams, they bear such titles as "On the Nature of Things," "Image of the World," "Mirror of the World." Students will become acquainted with medieval cosmology, geography, ethnography, time theory, etc., as they read classics of school learning (well known to medieval and early modern writers and artists). Authors to be treated include: Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Isidore, Rabanus Maurus, Honorius Augustodunensis, Lambert of St.-Omer, Herrad of Hohenburg, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Thomas of Cantimpre, Vincent of Beauvais, etc. A host of issues will emerge: concepts of memory, theories of the image and the complementarity of text and image, pedagogical theory (liberal and mechanical arts), attitudes toward the pre-Christian past (Greek and Roman learning) and the Islamic present (translated tracts). We will focus on concepts of "spatiality" as these affect the placement of data in schemes of knowledge and the organization of textual and visual information in schemata. Students from any relevant discipline welcome. Estimated cost of materials: less than $50.