234 pp. Melodies of Peter Abelard and Hildegard de Bingen in the appendix, 27 pp. Dust Jacket with rubbing and two 1-inch tears with attendant creases, price clipped. Contents: I. Poetic Individuality--Questions; II. Ruodlieb--The Emergence of Romance; III. Semiramis--The Creation of Myth; IV. Peter Abelard--Planctus and Satire; V. Hildegarde of Bingen as Poetess and Dramatist; The Text of the Ordo Virtutem; VI. Epilogue--Paths of Further Inquiry; Appendix--Melodies of Peter Abelard and Hildegard (transcriptions by Ian Bent); Index. 'This book has grown out the attempt to analyse the literary implications of a group of texts that . . . I have come to regard as key-texts in the total picture of eleventh- and twelfth-century European poetry. . . . The common problem of poetic innovation and experiment to which these texts contribute inevitably demands constant reference to the realm of inherited literary convention and traditions, of the typical in medieval poetry, which has been adumbrated with such authority and so richly illustrated by Ernest Robert Curtius. By concentrating on a different mode of appraoch to individual poems, I have attempted in one respect to complement Curtius's great study, to sharpen the focus upon the spontaneity and independence of poetic creation that existed alongside, as well as within, established traditions.'--from the preface.