Introduction

Summary

THE EUROPEAN HIGH MIDDLE AGES saw a convergence of oral and written narrative traditions, new philosophical and scientific knowledge, and individual creativity that has been called the “Twelfth Century Renaissance.” Beginning in the twelfth century, authors schooled in the septem artes liberales (seven liberal arts) turned in greater numbers from Latin to the vernacular languages as their means of literary expression. Literary works from classical antiquity enjoyed a surge of popularity and reached wider audiences as they were transformed into epics in French and German. Poetry originally based on events during the migration period (Völkerwanderungen: fifth and sixth centuries) or on conflicts with Saracens in the Carolingian period (eighth century), which may have been transmitted orally through countless generations, also began to take literary form as authors structured it into longer epic narratives involving fanciful versions of historical figures such as Theoderic the Great, Attila the Hun, and William, Count of Orange, and legendary heroes such as Arthur and Roland. Lyric love poetry arose in Provence, spread from there to the kingdoms of France and Germany, providing impetus to already existing indigenous lyric traditions. Contacts with Islamic culture put Western Europe in contact with philosophical and scientific texts from Greco-Roman antiquity that had been preserved in Arabic, and sometimes provided with Arabic commentaries that were quite influential in their own right. The knowledge gained from an intensive preoccupation with these texts contributed to an increasing sensitivity for the natural world and peoples' place in it, opened up new questions for intellectual inquiry, and in turn enriched the flourishing vernacular literatures.