Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Vol. 74 » (Reprint)

In this, his final book, Erich Auerbach writes, "My purpose is always to write history." Tracing the transformations of classical Latin rhetoric from late antiquity to the modern era, he explores major concerns raised in his Mimesis: the historical and social contexts in which writings were received, and issues of aesthetics, semantics, stylistics, and sociology that anticipate the concerns of the new historicism.

The Times Literary Supplement

This book, like [Mimesis], is necessary reading. . . . [Its] penetration of the Western public and its language is both subtle and powerful. . . . The existence and the delights of his book and of the lifework it completed are an enormous beacon burning against despair.