This study of the definition of literature in the late medieval period is based on manuals of writing and on literary commentary and glosses. It defines a method of reading which may now profitably explain medieval texts, and identifies new primary medieval evidence which may ground and guide new reading.

Allen chooses texts whose commentary tradition provides the greatest opportunity for completeness. The most important of these is Ovid's Metamorphoses. Medieval readings of Ovid bring into focus a number of major literary questions--the problems of fable and fiction, of...