This book focuses on Abelard’s logical-grammatical analysis of natural language. Tools of modern categorial grammar are employed to clarify many of the problems raised by historiography. The book’s ample analysis of grammatical sources and critical literature allows one to evaluate the progress which is at the basis of the forthcoming terministic logic. The book is aimed at scholars of medieval philosophy and historians of logic and linguistics.

The importance of Pierre Abelard's position in the history of logic has been stressed by the editions of the Glasse Letterali edited 2 by M. Dal Pral, of the Dialectica edited by De Rijk, and, more recently by the publication of two texts which Minio Paluello 3 attributes to the Palatine Master. The interest of students in the writings of Abelard is further stimulated by considering the time in which he lived, a strategic point in the history of mediaeval logic ; also by the echo of the fame in which his contemporaries had cloaked him, and by his own vivacious and rampant personality. The historical humus which nourished and fired the polemic that makes the Palatine Master's pages so personal and noteworthy is not yet completely known to us, and Geyer has already pointed out the difficulty of satisfactorily understanding the logical position of Abelard before being familiar with the contemporary glossary materia\.4 This material, judging by the information supplied to us by John of Salisbury and by the actual words of our subject, who tells us of numerous discussions and frequently refers to the 'sen tentiae' of'quidam' which give a different interpretation ofthe Aristo telian or Boetian passages, turned out to be of considerable weight.

This book offers a major reassessment of Abelard’s modal logic and theory of modalities, and provides a comprehensive study of the 12th-century context in which his views originated and developed, by analysing many logical sources that are still unedited and mostly unexplored.

Methods and Methodologies explores two questions about studying the Aristotelian tradition of logic. The first, addressed by the chapters on methods in the first half of the book, is directly about the medieval logical commentaries, treatises and handbooks. How did medieval authors in the different traditions, Latin and Arabic, go about their work on Aristotelian logic? In particular, how did they themselves conceive the relationship between logic and other branches of philosophy and disciplines outside philosophy? The second question is about methodologies, the subject of the chapters in the second half of the book: it invites writers to reflect on their own and their colleagues’ practice as twenty-first century interpreters of this medieval writing on Aristotelian logic. Contributors are Sten Ebbesen, Christopher J. Martin, Christophe Erismann, Andrew Arlig, Simo Knuuttila, Amos Bertolacci, Jennifer Ashworth, Paul Thom, Gyula Klima, Matteo di Giovanni and Margaret Cameron.

A history of philosophy from 1100-1600 concentrating on the Aristotelian tradition in the Latin Christian West. "will long remain the major guide to later medieval philosophy and related topics. Most of the essays are exciting and challenging, some of them truly brilliant." --Speculum

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