Includes bibliographical references (pages [325]-361).

Introduction: 'Jog on, jog on", European career paths / Patrick Cheney -- Greek lives and Roman careers in the classical Vita tradition / Joseph Farrell -- From Cursus to Ductus: figures of writing in western late antiquity (Augustine, Jerome, Cassiodorus, Bede) / Mark Vessey -- Medieval literary careers: the Theban track / Robert R. Edwards -- Authority and influence - vocation and anxiety: the sense of a literary career in the sentimental novel and Celestina / James F. Burke -- Versions of a career: Petrarch and his Renaissance commentators / William J. Kennedy -- Judging a literary career: the case of Antonio de Guevara (1480?-1545) / Kathleen Bollard de Broce -- Arms versus letters: the poetics of war and the career of the poet in early modern Spain / Anne J. Cruz -- Divine poetry as a career move: the complexities and consolations of following David / Anne Lake Prescott -- 'Novells of his devise': Chaucerian and Virgilian career paths in Spenser's Februarie eclogue / Patrick Cheney -- Cervantes and the Virgilian wheel: the portrayal of a literary career / Frederick A. de Armas -- Epic violence: captives, Moriscos, and empire in Cervantes / Álvaro Molina -- Renaissance Englishwomen and the literary career / Susanne Woods ... [et al.].

In this first book-length study in the fieldof authorial criticism, various specialists from Italian, French, English, and Spanish studies collectively discuss literary careers spanning from classical antiquity through the Renaissance.