European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages

"This is, I think, the finest work of literary scholarship in my time, by the great German philologist Ernst Robert Curtius. It is an extraordinary study of the continuity of European literature, from Homer and the other Greeks, on through Virgil and the great Latin writers, to a culmination in Dante , and moving beyond to a consideration of a long tradition that concludes with Goethe. Curtius traces the evolution of language in Italy, in France and in Spain. The middle ages depended heavily on Latin – the vernaculars developed out of it. The greatest instance is Dante, who wrote some of his prose works in Latin but who chose the Tuscan vernacular for much of his work. By his choice, he made it the vehicle for poets who come after him, Boccaccio and Petrarch down through Leopardi and Ungaretti. Without Dante, the language that we all call Italian would not have happened. I prefer Curtius on Dante to the discussion of Dante by any other critic, because he sees that Dante is creating a myth, or even a gnosis, of his own. Ultimately, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas are nowhere near as important as Dante. It is from Curtius that I have learned – and others go on learning – what literature is, and why I myself would call it a way of life and a way of thought. I’m so deeply influenced by Ernst Robert Curtius’s magnificent book that I probably do owe it to him. But I suppose it all depends how you define “spiritual”. For me, the two great figures of Sir John Falstaff and Hamlet – the great sceptic and nihilist in Shakespeare – offer me spiritual entities of the most intense kind. But then, I’m a heretic. I like to say, “There is no god but god and his name is William Shakespeare.” That’s what we’re talking about today. I regard ER Dodds, whom I knew personally, as a strong precursor. I never met Ernst Robert Curtius, but we corresponded and I regard him as a forerunner. And then the author of the third book was my own marvellous teacher."