Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages

Erich Auerbach (1892-1957) was Sterling Professor of Romance Philology at Yale University. His Mimesis is also available from Princeton University Press.

• Foreword (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

"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