Combing matters of literature, history, and linguistics, this issue of Mosaic examines the rise (and sometimes the fall) of vernacular literatures in England, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Italy, and Spain. Vernacular literatures are explored as both a break from and a continuation of older forms of language and literature—as both a form of “popular language” and as exhibiting an “evident concern to make the vernacular a vehicle worthy of conveying high truth.”