Still more significant of the change are the references
to the course of study in the statutes of Corpus Christi
College, Oxford (1517). The approved prose writers are
Cicero--an apology is offered for the use of barbarous
words not known to Cicero--Sallust, Valerius Maximus,
Suetonius, Pliny, Livy, and Quintilian. Virgil, Ovid
Lucan, Juvenal, Terence and Plautus are approved as poets.
Suitable books to study during the vacations are the
works of Lorenzo della Valle, Aulus Gellius, and Poliziano.
In Greek the writings--most of them quite new to the
age--of Isocrates, Lucian, Philostratus, Aristophanes,
Theocritus, Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, Hesiod,
Demosthenes, Thucydides, Aristotle, and Plutarch are
recommended. Such a list bears few resemblances to the
academic library we have attempted to describe.[1]
[1] Oxford Stat., c. 21.
Section IV
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries romances
began to creep into all libraries, save the academic, in
which they are rarely found. As soon as romance
literature took a firm hold upon public favour the monks
added some of it to their collections.
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