Latin literature: a history

TLDR

Latin Literature: A History provides a comprehensive 1000‑year survey of Latin literature from its origins to the early Middle Ages, serving as the first English reference guide of its kind in nearly forty years. The book compiles author names, dates, edition citations, and detailed summaries, blending encyclopedic breadth with critical analysis. It presents a wide-ranging panorama of major authors from the earliest examples to Gregory of Tours and the Venerable Bede. Author Gian Biagio Conte also wrote Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, and Pliny's Encyclopedia, available from Johns Hopkins.

Abstract

This authoritative history of literature offers a comprehensive survey of the 1000-year period from the origins of as a written language to the early Middle Ages. Serving as a reference work, a bibliographic guide, a literary study and a reader's handbook, Latin Literature: A History is the first work of its kind to appear in English in nearly four decades. From the first examples of written through Gregory of Tours in the 6th century and the Venerable Bede in the 7th, Latin Literature offers a wide-ranging panorama of all major authors. Including names, dated, edition citations, and detailed summaries, the work combines the virtues of an encyclopaedia with the critical intelligence readers have come to expect from Italy's leading Latinist, Gian Biagio Conte. Many of the entries those on Virgil and Petronius, for example - provide elegantly compact formulations of work on the very frontier of current study, and virtually all entries offer something of interest for the lay reader and expert alike. Gian Biagio Conte is the author of Genres and Readers: Lucretius, Love Elegy, Pliny's Encyclopedia, also available from Johns Hopkins.