Cambridge Histories Online

Home

Browse

News

About

Subscribe

Help/FAQs

Home

»
Browse
»
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism Vol. 2: The Middle Ages

Previous

Next

The Middle Ages

Series The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Volume 2

Authors Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson

Publication Date 2005

Hardback ISBN-13
9780521300070

Hardback ISBN-10
052130007X

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1017/CHOL9780521300070

Overview

This is the first-ever history of the literary theory and criticism produced during the Middle Ages that covers all the main traditions in Latin, the major European vernaculars, and Byzantine Greek. Starting with the study of grammar and the formal 'arts' of poetry, letter-writing and preaching, it proceeds to offer a full description of the Latin commentary tradition on classical and classicizing literature, followed by explanations of medieval views on literary imagination and memory, and the ways in which certain texts were believed to achieve moral profit through pleasure. Subsequent essays explore the diverse theoretical and critical traditions which developed in the vernacular languages, ranging from Medieval Irish to Old Norse, Occitan to Middle High German, concentrating particularly on Dante and his commentators and Italian humanist criticism. The volume concludes with an examination of the attitudes to literature and its uses in Greek Byzantium.

For more details of the
print book, and how to buy it online, please see
The Middle Ages in the Cambridge University Press online
catalogue.

Search

Select the scope of your search

All Content

This Volume

or advanced search

Subscriber log in

You are not currently logged in.

Log in.

This Volume is in

Complete Cambridge Histories Online

Literary Studies

The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism

Table of Contents

Frontmatter

Introduction

The Liberal Arts and the Arts of Latin Textuality

The Study of Classical Authors

Textual psychologies: imagination, memory, pleasure

Vernacular critical traditions: the early Middle Ages

Vernacular critical traditions: the late Middle Ages

Latin and vernacular in Italian literary theory

Byzantine literary theory and criticism

Bibliography

©2011 Cambridge University Press.
Terms of Use

Privacy Policy

Contact Us

Subscribe

Credits