Otten (theology and the history of Christianity, Utrecht U.) looks at 12th-century humanism in as an all-embracing discourse in which the human and the divine are found to be on equal footing, as a certain climate of thinking and doing theology that began to grow in the early Middle Ages, climaxed in the 12th century, and wilted away soon after. Elements of it however, were transmitted to certain kinds of late medieval poetry, she says, but devoid of their original intellectual and historical context. It is this whole story that she embraces here. Among the aspects she discusses are the Medieval analogy between nature and scripture and its demise, William of Conches and the art of science, Peter Abelard and the makeover of traditional theology, and Bernard Silvestris on suicide. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)