SOURCE: Leclercq, Jean. “Literary Genres.” In The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, translated by Catharine Misrahi, pp. 187-232. 1974. Reprint. London: SPCK, 1978.

In the following essay, originally published in French in 1957, Leclercq surveys the types of literature written by the monks, including hagiographies, sermons, sententiae, and letters.

In the Middle Ages, as in antiquity, no writing is done without “composition”: the stylistic material is arranged in a certain order. Authors conform to ways of writing and types of composition, each of which has its own rules. No doubt the idea of “literary genre” is difficult to define, since it is seldom formulated in a theoretical manner; but it is a fact that the genres do exist. Often at the beginning of a piece of writing, it is explained to which category it is to belong, whether it is to be, for...