<p>Commonplace-books were the information-organizers of Early Modern Europe, notebooks of quotations methodically arranged for easy retrieval. From their first introduction to the rudiments of Latin to the specialized studies of their later years, the pupils of humanist schools were trained to use commonplace-books. The common-place book mapped and resourced Renaissance culture's moral thinking, its accepted strategies of argumentation, its rhetoric, and its deployment of knowledge. In this study, Ann Moss investigates the evolution of the commonplace-book from its medieval antecedents, through its humanist realization, its later printed manifestations, and, finally, to its gradual decline in the seventeenth century.<br></p>

Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought

Literature & Fiction

Moss, Ann

History & Criticism

Clarendon Press

This study provides an entirely new look at an era of radical change in the history of West European thought, the period between 1480 and 1540, mainly in France and Germany. The book's main thesis is that the Latin language turn was not only concurrent with other aspects of change, but was a fundamental instrument in reconfiguring horizons of thought, reformulating paradigms of argument, and rearticulating the relationship between fiction and truth.

Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn

British & Irish

Oxford University Press

This book is a major study of the development of French poetry in the Renaissance, which examines changes in style and vision by looking both at how poetry was read in this period and how it was written. Dr Moss examines vernacular versions of fables from Ovid's Metamorphoses, published between the end of the fifteenth century and beginning of the seventeenth century, which reveal fundamental changes both in reading habits and in assumptions about literary aesthetics and the relationship of literature to truth. Through detailed analysis of mythological narratives in the Ovidian tradition composed by Lemaire de Beiges, Francois Habert, Baif and Ronsard, among others, and by concentrating on a few specific mythological subjects Dr Moss is able to identify the salient features in these developments and so broaden our understanding of the aesthetic revolution which transformed the literature and mentality of France and Western Europe during the Renaissance.

Poetry and Fable: Studies in Mythological Narrative in Sixteenth-Century France (Cambridge Studies in French, Series Number 6)

Cambridge University Press

Ovid in Renaissance France: A Survey of the Latin Editions of Ovid and Commentaries Printed in France Before 1600 (Warburg Institute Studies & Texts)

Warburg Institute

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Books by Moss, Ann