The computer revolution is upon us. The future of books and of reading are debated. Will there be books in the next millennium? Will we still be reading? As uncertain as the answers to these questions might be, as clear is the message about the value of the book expressed by medieval writers. The contributors to the volume The Book**and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages explore the significance of the written document as the key icon of a whole era. Both philosophers and artists, both poets and clerics wholeheartedly subscribed to the notion that reading and writing represented essential epistemological tools for spiritual, political, religious, and philosophical quests. To gain a deeper understanding of the cultural significance of the medieval book, the contributors to this volume examine pertinent statements by medieval philosophers and French, German, English, Spanish, and Italian poets.

Inhalt
Introduction, Albert Classen Varying Degrees of Light: Bonaventure and the Medieval Book of Nature, Ashlynn K. Pai ; Reading That Transforms: Virgil's Hero Reborn on Twelfth Century Vernacular Representations, Raymond Cormier Reading and the Book: Frame and Story in the Old French Dolopathos, Penny Simons The Book and Reading in Medieval High German Literature, Albrecht Classen Book Metaphors in the Textual Community, Jean-Marie Kauth The Language of the Text: Authorship and Textuality in Pearl, The Divine Comedy , and Piers Plowman, Burt Kimmelman Building Christian Narrative: The Rhetoric of Knowledge, Revelation and Interpretation in Libro de Apolonio, Patricia E. Grieve Chaucer's Literate Characters Reading Their Texts: Interpreting Infinite Regression, or the Narcissus Syndrome, Jean E. Jost Story, Picture, and Reading in Wynkyn de Worde's Vitas Patrum, Sue Ellen Holbrook Reading the Virgin Reader, David Linton Marie Legens-Maria Legere. St. Marys as an Ideal Reader and St. Mary as a Textbook, Winfred Frey