This course explores the development of key medieval theoretical ideas about writing, reading, interpretation, imagination, and memory. Through close readings of rhetorical treatises, arts of poetry, preaching manuals and textual commentaries written in Latin between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, students will study key topics, such as the status of literary creations, styles, authorship, relationship between texts and readers as well as that of texts and authors, and the ethically charged understanding of how texts are shaped by as well as shape extra-textual reality. Medieval theoretical discussions and their practical translations in various forms of medieval writing will be explored in comparison with modern theoretical treatments of similar questions. Readings include works by Pseudo Cicero, Horace, Augustine, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Matthew of Vendôme, Alberic of Montecassino, and Dante, as well as a range of medieval commentary and modern theory focussed on questions of authorship, memory and imagination.