Fiction and Incarnation : Rhetoric, Theology, and Literature in the Middle Ages

The development of a `modern' form of scientific enquiry occurred in the late Middle Ages and under the umbrella of Christianity, but Leupin argues that the desire to quantify and find empirical bases for things goes back much earlier than Galileo and Copernicus. This study attempts to prove that an epistemological break took place within Christianity and that it can be traced back to one particular dogma that is unique to Christian faith, that of incarnation. Through studying the writings of Cicero, Quintilian, St Augustine and many others, Leupin considers the dogma involving the embodiment of God and the relationship between discourse and literature.