SOURCE: Chase, Colin. “Alcuin's Grammar Verse: Poetry and Truth in Carolingian Pedagogy.” In Insular Latin Studies, edited by Michael W. Herren, pp. 135-52. Toronto, Canada: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1981.

In the following essay, Chase takes other scholars to task for projecting their own attitudes and interests onto those of Alcuin.

In recent years, a marked tendency towards deductive analysis has characterized Alcuinian studies. The purpose of the deduction has been to abstract from Alcuin's work a systematic treatment of areas of human thought which he dealt with only implicitly or casually. Thus, in 1959, Luitpold Wallach in Alcuin and Charlemagne¹ outlined a political philosophy based on his analysis of the Dialogus de Rhetorica et Virtutibus, though Alcuin purported to be treating only the subject implied by his title, that is, the essential nature and manner of acquisition of the art of rhetoric and the four cardinal virtues. Again...