Virginie Greene - Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, new ways of storytelling and inventing fictions appeared in the French-speaking areas of Europe. This new art still influences our global culture of fiction. Virginie Greene explores the relationship between fiction and the development of neo-Aristotelian logic during this period through a close examination of seminal literary and philosophical texts by major medieval authors, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Abelard, and Chrtien de Troyes. This study of Old French logical fictions encourages a broader theoretical reflection about fiction as a universal human trait and a defining element of the history of Western philosophy and literature. Additional close readings of classical Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and modern analytic philosophy including the work of Bertrand Russell and Rudolf Carnap, demonstrate peculiar traits of Western rationalism and expose its ambivalent relationship to fiction.

VIRGINIE GREENE is Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She is author of Cent vues de John Harvard (2011), co-author of Thinking Through Chrtien de Troyes (2011), translator of Le dbat sur le Roman de la Rose (2006), and editor of The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature (2006).

This series of critical books seeks to cover the whole area of literature written in the major medieval languages the main European vernaculars, and medieval Latin and Greek during the period c .11001500. Its chief aim is to publish and stimulate fresh scholarship and criticism on medieval literature, special emphasis being placed on understanding major works of poetry, prose, and drama in relation to the contemporary culture and learning which fostered them.

For a list of titles published in the series, please see .