Rita Copeland
Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. 
Cambridge University Press, 1991. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. First edition. 0521385172 xiv/295 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.25" x 9.25", is bound in dark brown cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book and dust jacket displays light shelfwear. Previous owner's name is written in very small print at top of front flyleaf. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"Translation played a crucial role in he emergence of vernacular literary culture in the Middle Ages. This is the first book to consider the rise of translation as part of a broader history of critical discourses. Rita Copeland shows how ideas about translation from antiquity to the Middle Ages were generated within the theoretical systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics, textual production and textual interpretation. She discusses the importance of these systems in ancient and medieval schools and in literary culture at large. Translation became a site of opposition between learned Latin and vernacular cultures, and as a form of cultural appropriation exploited the models of textual invention supplied by rhetorical theory and exegetical practice. The book illuminates this critical history through close readings of German, French, and English translations of Latin texts, including works by Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and Gower.
Rita Copeland's innovative study has important implications for the understanding of medieval literary theory and throws light on wider developments in European learning in the Middle Ages."