Translation played a crucial role in the emergence of vernacular literary culture in the Middle Ages. This is the first book to consider the rise of translation as part of a broader history of critical discourses. Rita Copeland shows how ideas about translation from antiquity to the Middle Ages were generated within the theoretical systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics, textual production and textual interpretation. She discusses the importance of these systems in ancient and medieval education, showing how they shaped the practice of translation in the medieval schools and in literary culture at large. Translation became a site of opposition between learned Latin and vernacular cultures, and as a form of cultural appropriation exploited the models of textual invention supplied by rhetorical theory and exegetical practice. The book illuminates this critical history through close readings of German, French, and English translations of Latin texts, including works by Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and Gower. Rita Copeland's innovative study has important implications for the understanding of medieval literary theory and throws light on wider developments in European learning in the Middle Ages.