GRGR(2) Congeries, Lists, Catalogs (was Hours, Towers, Powers)

[jm]

The Compact OED lists "congeries" as a "heaping up" of any number of various
items, without mention of any specific literary context for the word.  A
handout of "Rhetorical Figures in Renaisance Poetry" which I received in a
Milton class defines "congeries" as "a heaping up of words in rapid
coordination."  

For example, in Pope's _Letter of Heloise to Abelard_:  "How often must it
love, how often hate! / How often hope, despair, resent, regret, / conceal,
disdain--do all things but forget."  Here's another from Burton's _The
Anatomy of Melancholy_:  "To see a man turn himself into all shapes like a
chameleon, or a Proteus, omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum, to act
twenty parts and persons at once for his advantage, to temporize and vary
like Mercury the planet, good with good, bad with bad; having a several
face, garb, and character for every one he meets; of all religions, humours,
inclinations; to fawn like a spaniel, mentitis et mimicis obsequiis, rage
like a lion, bark like a cur, fight like a dragon, sting like a serpent, as
meek as a lamb, and yet again grin like a tiger, weep like a crocodile,
insult over some, and yet others domineer over him, here command, there
crouch, tyrannize in one place, be baffled in another, a wise man at home, a
fool abroad to make others merry."   And since I've gone this far with it,
here's one from _Paradise Lost_: "O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp, /
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, / A universe of
death, which God by curse / Created evil..."   

_A Handbook to Literature_ (6th edition) contains only the term "catalog,"
which admittedly is simpler and more modern than "congeries."
-jm