Brian Stock (historian)

He carried out post-doctoral studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris and the University of Rome, La Sapienza.

He is presently Senior Research Fellow at Victoria College, University of Toronto and holds the chair of criticism at the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome, which awarded him the prestigious International Feltrinelli Prize in 2007.

His 1972 monograph, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century, examined the work of the twelfth-century Latin poet, Bernard Silvester, in particular his poem, the Cosmographia, which represents a synthesis of literary and empirical approaches to the study of nature.

Stock demonstrates that Silvester’s work holds aesthetic and rational approaches to nature in tension and thereby participates the twelfth-century’s renewed interest in theories of creation.

The Implications of Literacy (1983) studied the social effects of the growth of manuscript culture that took place in the Latin West during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Listening for the Text (1990) developed theoretical frameworks for discussing changes in forms of communication and knowledge transfer that occurred during the medieval period.

He is member of the advisory board of New Literary History and serves on the Comité scientifique of the Revue des Études Augustiniennes, Paris.