Post-Classical Latin Literature

Abstract

Abstract This necessarily imperfect survey of translations from Latin works of the 1,000 years following the fall of the Western Empire is arranged around prominent and mainly predictable categories of writing rather than by stages in a motivated history: one of the few safe generalizations about translation from medieval and modern Latin in the period 1660–1790 is that it did not proceed programmatically. In the first years of the Restoration, works on physics, chemistry, classical and oriental philology, theology, and history were routinely published in Latin. When addressing a continental readership on matters of intellectual interest, Latin was mandatory.