Writing Without Footnotes: The Role of the Medievalist in Contemporary Intellectual Life

by María Rosa Menocal, Sandro Sticca (Editor)

Maria Rosa Menocal received her PhD in Romance Philology in 1979 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also taught before joining the faculty at Yale University. She is the author of a number of books on a range of comparative medieval literary and cultural topics, and the editor of the recent The Literature of Al-Andalus volume in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature series. Currently she is the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of Special Programs in the Humanities at Yale University.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

María Rosa Menocal is a scholar of medieval culture and history. Menocal earned a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Before joining the Yale University faculty in 1986, she taught Romance philology at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2002, Menocal wrote the book The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, which has been translated into many languages, and includes an introduction by fellow Yale Sterling Professor in the Humanities Harold Bloom. The book focuses on tolerance in Medieval Spain within the Muslim and Christian kingdoms through political examples as well as cultural examples.

Menocal also is the author of The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage (1987), as well as Writing in Dante's Cult of Truth from Borges to Boccacio (1991) and Shards of Love: Exile and the Origins of the Lyric (1994).

Born in Cuba and raised in Philadelphia, Menocal is currently director of the Yale Whitney Humanities Center and the co-editor of The Literature of Al-Andalus in the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature series.