Authorship and Publicity Before Print : : Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning / / Daniel Hobbins.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn Press eBook Package Complete Collection
• VerfasserIn: Hobbins, Daniel,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2012]; ©2009
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Language: English
• Series: The Middle Ages Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 p.) :; 21 illus.

Widely recognized by contemporaries as the most powerful theologian of his generation, Jean Gerson (1363-1429) dominated the stage of western Europe during a time of plague, fratricidal war, and religious schism. Yet modern scholarship has struggled to define Gerson's place in history, even as it searches for a compelling narrative to tell the story of his era.Daniel Hobbins argues for a new understanding of Gerson as a man of letters actively managing the publication of his works in a period of rapid expansion in written culture. More broadly, Hobbins casts Gerson as a mirror of the complex cultural and intellectual shifts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In contrast to earlier theologians, Gerson took a more humanist approach to reading and to authorship. He distributed his works, both Latin and French, to a more diverse medieval public. And he succeeded in reaching a truly international audience of readers within his lifetime. Through such efforts, Gerson effectively embodies the aspirations of a generation of writers and intellectuals. Removed from the narrow confines of late scholastic theology and placed into a broad interdisciplinary context, his writings open a window onto the fascinating landscape of fifteenth-century Europe.The picture of late medieval culture that emerges from this study offers neither a specter of decaying scholasticism nor a triumphalist narrative of budding humanism and reform. Instead, Hobbins describes a period of creative and dynamic growth, when new attitudes toward writing and debate demanded and eventually produced new technologies of the written word.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Illustrations and Maps -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Gerson as Bookman: Prescribing ''the Common School of Theological Truth'' -- 2. Justifying Authorship: New Diseases and New Cures -- 3. A Tour of Medieval Authorship: Late Works and Poetry -- 4. Literary Expression: Logic, Rhetoric, and Scholarly Vice -- 5. The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Implications of the Late Medieval Tract -- 6. Publishing Before Print (1): A Series of Publishing Moments -- 7. Publishing Before Print (2): From Coterie Readership to Massive Market -- Conclusion -- List of Abbreviations -- Appendix: Gerson Manuscripts in Carthusian and Celestine Monasteries -- Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index of Manuscripts -- Index of Works by Gerson -- General Index -- Acknowledgments