Description

This book presents samples of experimental methods for reading medieval Latin texts that have scarcely been adopted, if at all, by mainstream research in the field. It contributes to the discovery of some underestimated aspects of early medieval (especially Carolingian) Latin literature: intertextuality as intercultural relationship (in Biblical epic), intermediality (text-image-sound connections), interdisciplinarity (science, religion, and poetry), hermeneutics (Biblical exegesis as poetry-engine), post-colonial reading (medieval Latin as a second language), socio-literary approaches (monastic epigraphs as witnesses of everyday life, writing as a status symbol of an intellectual class and a whole civilization). It also discusses quantitative methods, which are explored in more detail in a second volume, Digital Philology and Quantitative Criticism of Medieval Literature: Unconventional Approaches to Medieval Latin Literature II). The book thus seeks to encourage scholarly interest in obscure or less familiar elements of the Carolingian literary renewal, interpreted here as more a laboratory of innovations than a revival of traditional patterns.