Summary
Medieval letters crystallize all the associations between the past and literature, all the indications that an essential link unites the notion of literature with a sense of the past. The curiosity aroused by medieval literature since its rediscovery at the dawn of Romanticism presupposes such associations. The forms of this literature itself conceal such clues. They invite us to embrace with a single glance the interest of the modern age in the medieval past and the signs of the past with which the Middle Ages mark their own literature. What's more, they invite us to look to the relationship with the past as a criterion for defining literature - a particularly necessary task in an age when the word is not understood in its modern sense, and when the very existence of the corresponding notion is uncertain.
