Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages

by Erich Auerbach, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Overview

In this, his final book, Erich Auerbach writes, "My purpose is always to write history." Tracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, he explores major concerns raised in his Mimesis: the historical and social contexts in which writings were received, and issues of aesthetics, semantics, stylistics, and sociology that anticipate the concerns of the new historicism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691024684
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/06/1993
Series:	Bollingen Series , #131
Edition description:	With a New foreword by Jan M. Ziolkowski
Pages:	456
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) was Sterling Professor of Romance Philology at Yale University. His Mimesis is also available from Princeton University Press.

Table of Contents

Foreword (1993)

Preface

Introduction: Purpose and Method 3

1 Sermo Humilis 25

Excursus: Gloria Passionis 67

2 Latin Prose in the Early Middle Ages 83

3 Camilla, or, The Rebirth of the Sublime 181

4 The Western Public and Its Language 235

Abbreviations 341

List of Works Cited 343

General Index 373

Index of Latin Words 389

Bibliography of the Writings of Erich Auerbach 391

Biographical Note 407

Editorial Reviews

"Auerbach magically relates the story of Christian transformation of the . . . styles of classical pagan antiquity with the lowly style accepted as standard in the Middle Ages until the reemergence of the sublime style through Dante's Divine Comedy."

The Virginia Quarterly Review

"This book, like [Mimesis], is necessary reading. . . . [Its] penetration of the Western public and its language is both subtle and powerful. . . . The existence and the delights of his book and of the lifework it completed are an enormous beacon burning against despair."

The Times Literary Supplement

"This book, like [Mimesis], is necessary reading. . . . [Its] penetration of the Western public and its language is both subtle and powerful. . . . The existence and the delights of his book and of the lifework it completed are an enormous beacon burning against despair."—The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher