Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality

Description: Medieval notions of historical and literary truth derive from classical rhetorical tradition and differ from modern, empirically based notions of factuality. Basing her argument on a description of education in rhetoric, Morse demonstrates that medieval imaginative history and biogrphy were "susceptible to literary analysis" and that medieval translation is more aptly viewed, in modern terms, as transformation.; Conventional notions of elegance and eloquence influenced the composition and receptio of medieval works, and to understand tham we must reacquire appropriate habitys of thought. The study concentrates on the "high" Middle Ages but ranges from Cicero to Milton; Chaucer is mentioned passim.