speculum literature

noun

Etymology

From Latin speculum (“mirror”) in the title of these works.

  1. derived from speculum — “mirror

Definitions

  1. A medieval literary genre, popular from the 12th through the 16th centuries, inspired by…

    A medieval literary genre, popular from the 12th through the 16th centuries, inspired by the urge to encompass encyclopedic knowledge within a single work.

    • Mirror or speculum literature, as Jourda and Cottrell have noted, can be traced back through medieval tradition to Augustinian, Biblical and Platonic sources.
  2. Alternative letter-case form of speculum literature.

    • Berges’s view (p. 343) that this work stands outside the tradition of Speculum''' literature can only be valid for the mirrors preceding it; […]
    • His remarks on the medieval tradition of Speculum''' literature, into which he places the Roman, are, of course, intended to be suggestive rather than comprehensive; […]
    • The saint king’s biographies, compiled in the court, and the Hungarian royal chronicle, compiled in different segments at different times, could both be classified as a form of Speculum''' literature.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for speculum literature. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA