Latinitas Perennis. Volume I: The Continuity of Latin Literature

This volume deals with the question of the continuity of Latin literature throughout its history. For the first time, contributions are brought together from each of the three fields within the studies of Latin literature: Classical, Medieval and Neo-Latin, reflecting on problems such as the transmission of the Latin heritage, the creation and perpetuation of a classical normativeness and the reactions against it.
The book is divided into three parts, corresponding to the theoretical principle of organic development: “Beginnings?”, “Perfections?”, “Transitions?”, thus questioning the validity of a similar evolutionistic model.
Because of the numerous points of contact between Latin and the national literatures, the volume is of particular relevance for the studies of the European literary history.

Contributors include: Davide Canfora, Perrine Galand-Hallyn, Sander Goldberg, Thomas Haye, Marc van der Poel, Michael Roberts, Francesco Stella, Wim Verbaal, Gregor Vogt-Spira, and Jan Ziolkowski.

Wim Verbaal, Ph.D. (2000) in Classical Philology, Ghent, is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at the University of Ghent. He has published on intellectual history and poetics of the 12th century including The Council of Sens Reconsidered: Masters, Monks, or Judges (Church History, 74-2005).

Yanick Maes, Ph.D. (2003) in Classical Philology, Ghent, is doctor assistant in the department of Latin & Greek at Ghent University. He is working and publishing on suicide in Vergil, Lucan, the role of exercitation in Quintilian, the use of allusion, and the sociology of literature.

Jan Papy, Ph.D. (1992) in Classical Philology, Leuven, is Research Professor of Neo-Latin at the Catholic University of Leuven. He has published on Italian humanism, intellectual history and Renaissance Philosophy in the Low Countries including (with K.A.E. Enenkel) Petrarch and His Readers in the Renaissance (Brill, 2005).

"There can be no doubt that the question of the periodization of Latin literature has to be re-examined, and this first colume clearly is a good start."
Gernot Wieland, The Journal of Medieval Latin, 19 (2009) 343-346.