The medieval genre of speculum literature, popular from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, was inspired by the urge to encompass encyclopedic knowledge within a single work.[1] However, some of these works have a restricted scope and function as instructional manuals.[2] In this sense, the encyclopedia and the speculum are similar but they are not the same genre.[3]
^Franklin-Brown, Mary (2012). Reading the world: encyclopedic writing in the scholastic age. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press. p. 273. ISBN9780226260709.