Bellum Grammaticale and the Rise of European Literature

Erik Butler is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Emory University, where he also teaches comparative literature and film

• Contents: Introduction; Civil war in the Republic of Letters; Frontiers and first causes: humanism, Renaissance, Reformation and the language war; The language war and absolutist eloquence; Greatness lost and regained: dialectic of the German language war; Conclusion: fighting words and the liberal arts; Bibliography; Index.

'This book is a formidable introduction to a crucial, yet neglected early modern genre: the bellum grammaticale, the language (or grammatical) war, a spirited and often bloody allegorical depiction of the battle between parts of speech, genres, and elements of rhetoric for primacy in language ...a useful and insightful introduction to the Latin bellum grammaticale and its early vernacular permutations. It is a valuable scholarly addition to libraries on Neo-Latin, humanism, and the emergence of vernacular literatures.' Renaissance Quarterly