The now-forgotten genre of the bellum grammaticale flourished in the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries as a means of satirizing outmoded cultural institutions and promoting new methods of instruction. Butler examines representations of language as war in texts written in Latin, French, and German; the study, by exploring the relationship between

Erik Butler is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Emory University, where he also teaches comparative literature and film

Contents: Introduction; Civil war in the Republic of Letters; Frontiers and first causes: humanism, Renaissance, Reformation and the language war; The language war and absolutist eloquence; Greatness lost and regained: dialectic of the German language war; Conclusion: fighting words and the liberal arts; Bibliography; Index.