由捷克科学院中世纪研究中心的学者 Pavlína Cermanová 和 Václav Žůrek 主编的文集 Books of Knowledge in Late Medieval Europe: Circulation and Reception of Popular Texts 于2021年底在 Brepols 社出版。本卷文集主要由捷克中世纪研究者贡献的论文组成。编者所称的“知识书籍”（books of knowledge）包含了范围很广的一系列流行文本，如各种编年史、兽书（bestiaries，动物寓言集）、教理手册、草药书等，这些中世纪书籍的内容涉及宇宙论、哲学、神学、自然科学、历史等诸多知识领域。在史料上，本卷文集的贡献者特别关注中欧地区的有关文本。
原图书简介：
This volume presents a new, complex approach to reading and reading techniques of books mediating knowledge in late medieval Europe.
This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as ‘books of knowledge’, such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present a summary of wisdom were so popular. These texts discussed cosmology, theology, philosophy, the natural sciences, history, and other fields. They often did so in an accessible way to maintain the potential to also attract a non-specialised public. The basic form was usually a narrative, chronologically or thematically structured, and clearly ordered to appeal to readers. Books of this kind could be disseminated in dozens or even hundreds of copies, and were often available (by translation or adaptation) in various languages, including the vernacular.
In exploring these widely-disseminated and highly popular texts that offered a precise segment of knowledge that could be accessed by readers outside the intellectual and social elite, this volume intends to introduce books of knowledge as a new category within the study of medieval literacy.
作者简介：
Pavlína Cermanová and Václav Žůrek are historians and researchers at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. In her research, Pavlína Cermanová focuses on the medieval apocalyptic thinking and intellectual history, Václav Žůrek focuses on the medieval historiography and royal representation.