Latin Literatures of Medieval and Early Modern Times in Europe and Beyond. A Millennium Heritage, ed. Francesco Stella, with the assistance of Danuta R. Shanzer and Lucie Dolezalová, Amsterdam–Philadelphia, PA, J. Benjamins 2024 (ISBN 978-9027214478), pp. XVIII–706 (24 × 17 cm), plates. (A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages, 34).
Descriptive review published in separate entries signed in Medioevo Latino 2025 and in Mirabile Web. Available on the website of Semicerchio since February 2026.

The volume presents a history of medieval Latin literature in English (with the exception of two chapters in French) from a comparative perspective, as required by the series A Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages. After the editors’ foreword (listed separately) and an introductory essay by Pascale Bourgain (also listed separately), the first macro-section (“Regional Layers”) is divided into a subsection “Europe” (comprising 19 territorial areas, including the so-called “peripheries” such as the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic countries, with essays by A. Bisanti, C. Giraud, D. E. Mairhofer, P. Stotz, C. Pérez González, P. F. Alberto, P. Moran, G. Dinkova-Bruun, L. Dolezalová, R. Wójcik, F. G. Kiss, L. B. Mortensen, and P. Bugiani) and a subsection “Regional Latinities Outside Europe”, devoted to extra-European areas such as the Americas, North Africa, the Near East, and the Far East, with essays by A. Bisanti, E. D’Angelo, D. König, S. Fischer, S. Pittaluga, and F. Stella.

The second macro-section (“Medieval Latin Multimedial Communication”) concerns the circulation of texts in written form or accompanied by images. It includes the subsection “Manuscripts and Visual Communication”, with studies by C. Cardelle de Hartmann, L. Dolezalová, G. Becht-Jördens, W. Stevens, and P. Gautier-Dalché on the forms of communication conveyed through manuscripts, including the relationship between text and image, as well as through maps and diagrams in scientific works; and the subsection “Orality and Performance”, with studies by S. Boynton and S. Barrett on performative transmission (musical, theatrical, liturgical, and homiletic).

The third section, “Renewing Paradigms”, contains studies by J. Ferrante, I. Cornelius, E. Bartoli, W. Westenholz, and G. J. Basile that explore recently developed themes (gender literature, previously unpublished artes dictandi, the relationship between document and fiction in historiographical narrative, and a reassessment of the transition from the Middle Ages to Humanism). The fourth and final section, entitled “Interfaces, Latin/Vernacular and Medieval/Modern. Modern and Contemporary After-Lives of Medieval Latin Symbols and Characters: Sample Stories—Transmissions and Patterns”, offers a selection of the reception of medieval Latin narrative themes and characters in other medieval and modern literatures (Hamlet, Faust, Troilus, Arthur, the magical), with studies by W. Verbaal, L. Raya Fages and P. Piqueras Yagüe, M. Bayless, S. Aronstein and T. Pugh, M. T. Kretschmer, C. Della Giovanpaola, and M. Bauer.

The volume is completed by an index containing over 5,000 personal and place names. Separate entries are provided for all the essays and for the preface. (Elisabetta Bartoli)

Section I

Instead of an Introduction

1. Pascale Bourgain

How Many Medieval Latin Literatures? pp. 3–11

This essay functions as a kind of introduction to the literary history presented in the volume.

According to the author, four different approaches intersect in the study of medieval Latin literature, each situated at the crossroads of classical tradition, ethnic cultures, and biblical knowledge.

First, Latinists study the life of Latin in its entirety, from both a linguistic and an aesthetic perspective.
Second, Romance philologists are interested in Latin as the point of origin for the forms and contents of Romance-language works, often working alongside anthropologists who use texts as documentation for the transmission of themes and motifs.
Third, historians have begun to consider the development of narratives and their poetic elaboration as a historical subject in its own right.
Finally, historians of intellectual life value the processes of cultural transmission and the transformations of textual heritage as phenomena deserving constant reassessment.

Section IA

Regional Layers: Europe

2. Armando Bisanti

Italy pp. 15–51

The author outlines a synthetic overview of medieval Latin literature in Italy between the fifth and the fourteenth centuries, placing it in relation to political and cultural history. Literary development is described with reference both to literary genres and to geographical areas, with particular attention to authors and their works.

Greater space is devoted to figures such as Ennodio, Boethius, Cassiodorus, Venantius Fortunatus, Gregory the Great, Paul the Deacon, Liutprand of Cremona, Ratherius of Verona, Alexander of Telese, Falcone of Benevento, Godfrey of Viterbo, the epic-historical poetry of the twelfth century, Peter of Eboli, Salimbene de Adam, Bonvesin de la Riva, Jacobus de Varagine, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.

The historiographical framework is organized according to the following periods: the age of the Romano-barbarian kingdoms, the Carolingian age, the post-Carolingian and Ottonian age, the twelfth-century renaissance, and the pre-humanist period.
(Lucia Pinelli)