Authorship and Publicity Before Print

Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning

Daniel Hobbins

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780812222746
• eBook ISBN:
  9780812202298
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

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

• Cover
• 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