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In the tension between competing ideas of authority and the urge to literary experiment, writers of the High Middle Ages produced some of their most distinctive achievements. This book examines these themes in the high culture of Western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, showing how the intimate links between the writer and the censor, the inquisitor and the intellectual developed from metaphors, at the beginning of the period, to institutions at its end. All Latin texts--from Peter Abelard to Bernard of Clairvaux, from the Archpoet to John of Salisbury and Alan of Lille--are translated into English, and discussed both in terms of their literary qualities and in relation to the cultural history of the High Middle Ages. Not a proto-Renaissance but part of a continuity that reached into the Reformation, the eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed a transformation of the writer's role. With a combination of literary, philological, and historical methods, Peter Godman sets the work of major intellectuals during this period in a new light.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix
ABBREVIATIONS xxi
I The Silencer and the Silenced 3
II Unbuttoned Dwarves 32
III Teaching by Fire and Sword 61
IV Smoldering Firebrands 107
V Soft Beatings 149
VI Archness 191
VII The Open Work 228
VIII The Polymath and the Fool 294
IX The Handle of the Knife 334
Bibliography of Primary Sources 349
Index of Quotations 357
General Index 363
"This is an ambitious book about an impressive range of authors in an important period in the development of Western thought. It is full of sharp observations crisply presented."—David Howlett, Medieval Latin Dictionary, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Overview
In the tension between competing ideas of authority and the urge to literary experiment, writers of the High Middle Ages produced some of their most distinctive achievements. This book examines these themes in the high culture of Western Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, showing how the intimate links between the writer and the censor, the inquisitor and the intellectual developed from metaphors, at the beginning of the period, to institutions at its end. All Latin texts--from Peter Abelard to ...