The encyclopedia entitled De proprietatibus rerum ("Book of the properties of things"), written in the 1240s by the Franciscan Bartholomew the Englishman, is among the most widely circulated and influential works of didactic literature of the late Middle Ages. Within the framework of the international project preparing the edition of the Latin text and its French translation by Jean Corbechon (1372), a symposium was held from October 9 to 11, 2003 in Münster, on the initiative of the Seminar für Lateinische Philologie des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität in Münster. The papers published in this volume discuss issues relating to source traditions, the constitution of a canon of encyclopedic knowledge, and the history of the dissemination and influence of texts. In the light of the vernacular translations of De proprietatibus rerum, historical and philological problems relating to the vernacular reception of the text are clarified. Encyclopaedic contents (eg botany, human ages, colors or precious stones) are questioned from the double point of view of description and spiritual interpretation. The presence and the function of the moralizing marginal notes in the Latin manuscripts of Barthélemy are, and this is a first, placed at the center of various researches.

Language: French, German, English

978-2-503-52298-2