Word of Mouth: Fama and Its Personifications in Art and Literature

The concept expressed by the Roman term fama roughly correlates to what we would today term 'hearsay', or the dissemination of information by 'word of mouth'. This volume proceeds from a brief discussion of the ancient concept to a detailed examination of the way in which fama has been personified in ancient and medieval literature and in European figurative art between the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries and the evolution of such depictions.