Description
Book SynopsisTracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, this book explores the concerns such as: 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.
Trade Review"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
Table of ContentsForeword (1993)PrefaceIntroduction: Purpose and Method31Sermo Humilis25Excursus: Gloria Passionis672Latin Prose in the Early Middle Ages833Camilla, or, The Rebirth of the Sublime1814The Western Public and Its Language235Abbreviations341List of Works Cited343General Index373Index of Latin Words389Bibliography of the Writings of Erich Auerbach391Biographical Note407
