Table of Contents

*Frontmatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. v*Introduction to the 2013 edition, pg. xi*TRANSLATOR'S NOTE, pg. xxi*NOTE OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT, pg. xxii*AUTHOR'S FOREWORD TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION, pg. xxiii*GUIDING PRINCIPLES, pg. xxviii*1. European Literature, pg. 1*2. The Latin Middle Ages, pg. 17*3. Literature and Education, pg. 36*4. Rhetoric, pg. 62*5. Topics, pg. 79*6. The Goddess Natura, pg. 106*7. Metaphorics, pg. 128*8. Poetry and Rhetoric, pg. 145*9. Heroes and Rulers, pg. 167*10. The Ideal Landscape, pg. 183*11. Poetry and Philosophy, pg. 203*12. Poetry and Theology, pg. 214*13. The Muses, pg. 228*14. Classicism, pg. 247*15. Mannerism, pg. 273*16. The Book as Symbol, pg. 302*17. Dante, pg. 348*18. Epilogue, pg. 380*EXCURSUSES, pg. 403*APPENDIX. The Medieval Bases of Western Thought, pg. 587*BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE, pg. 599*ABBREVIATIONS, pg. 600*INDEX, pg. 603

About the Author

Ernst Robert Curtius held the chair of romance literature and language at Bonn University from 1929 until his retirement in 1951. Colin Burrow is a fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. He is the author of "Epic Romance: Homer to Milton".

Reviews

"This is the sort of book which takes much of a man's lifetime to produce and which can be read again and again with profit and pleasure. In effect it is an analysis of medieval Latin literature as a major stage in the transition from the Graeco-Roman classics to the modern vernacular literatures. No forbidding catalogue of periods, authors, and works, but literary criticism and literary history by a thoughtful scholar at home in classical, medieval, and modern literature, this is a powerfully presented and richly informative study of medieval standards, values, assumptions and literary conventions."--The Virginia Quarterly Review "We have in [this work] a vast store of significant learning, and many new and important insights into the humane literary heritage and its precarious transmission."--Francis Fergusson, The Hudson Review "A balanced introduction to Curtius studies, putting this masterpiece in context as the work of a German academic 'mandarin' whom family history, character, and intellectual training made an advocate for an elite European cultural cosmopolitanism."--Sixteenth Century Journal