Adrian Armstrong is Professor of Early French Culture at The University of Manchester, the author of Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France 1470–1550, and the editor of several late medieval texts including Vol. 1 of the Œuvres complètes of Jean Bouchet. Sarah Kay is Professor of French at Princeton University, the author of several monographs on medieval French literature, including Courtly Contradictions and The Place of Thought, coauthor of A Short History of French Literature and Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, and coeditor of various volumes, most recently The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature.

"Does verse convey a different kind of knowledge than prose in the later Middle Ages? Yes and no, according to the authors of this erudite and entertaining book. Verse can convey knowledge as profound as does prose, but it does so differently: verse links the quest for knowledge to orality, performance, and personifications and thus invites its readers to engage in a different kind of epistemology: 'verse's ways of knowing.'."

• IntroductionPart I. Situating Knowledge1. Persistent Presence: Verse after Prose2. Poetry and History3. Poetry and ThoughtPart II. Transmitting and Shaping Knowledge4. Knowing the World in Verse Encyclopedias and Encyclopedic Verse5. Knowledge and the Practice of Poetry6. Textual Communities: Poetry and the Social Construction of KnowledgeConclusionBibliographyIndex

Adrian Armstrong is Professor of Early French Culture at The University of Manchester, the author of Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France 1470–1550, and the editor of several late medieval texts including Vol. 1 of the Œuvres complètes of Jean Bouchet. Sarah Kay is Professor of French at Princeton University, the author of several monographs on medieval French literature, including Courtly Contradictions and The Place of Thought, coauthor of A Short History of French Literature and Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, and coeditor of various volumes, most recently The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature.

"Does verse convey a different kind of knowledge than prose in the later Middle Ages? Yes and no, according to the authors of this erudite and entertaining book. Verse can convey knowledge as profound as does prose, but it does so differently: verse links the quest for knowledge to orality, performance, and personifications and thus invites its readers to engage in a different kind of epistemology: 'verse's ways of knowing.'."

• IntroductionPart I. Situating Knowledge1. Persistent Presence: Verse after Prose2. Poetry and History3. Poetry and ThoughtPart II. Transmitting and Shaping Knowledge4. Knowing the World in Verse Encyclopedias and Encyclopedic Verse5. Knowledge and the Practice of Poetry6. Textual Communities: Poetry and the Social Construction of KnowledgeConclusionBibliographyIndex

Adrian Armstrong is Professor of Early French Culture at The University of Manchester, the author of Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France 1470–1550, and the editor of several late medieval texts including Vol. 1 of the Œuvres complètes of Jean Bouchet. Sarah Kay is Professor of French at Princeton University, the author of several monographs on medieval French literature, including Courtly Contradictions and The Place of Thought, coauthor of A Short History of French Literature and Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes, and coeditor of various volumes, most recently The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature.

"Does verse convey a different kind of knowledge than prose in the later Middle Ages? Yes and no, according to the authors of this erudite and entertaining book. Verse can convey knowledge as profound as does prose, but it does so differently: verse links the quest for knowledge to orality, performance, and personifications and thus invites its readers to engage in a different kind of epistemology: 'verse's ways of knowing.'."

• IntroductionPart I. Situating Knowledge1. Persistent Presence: Verse after Prose2. Poetry and History3. Poetry and ThoughtPart II. Transmitting and Shaping Knowledge4. Knowing the World in Verse Encyclopedias and Encyclopedic Verse5. Knowledge and the Practice of Poetry6. Textual Communities: Poetry and the Social Construction of KnowledgeConclusionBibliographyIndex