In his monograph Verlorenes Mittelalter, Thomas Haye discusses the question of why the greater part of the Latin texts which were produced over the course of the Middle Ages has not been preserved. Contemporary sources attest to the existence of thousands of texts which have not come down to the modern era. As Haye demonstrates, these losses are not primarily due to random happenstance, but are often rather the results of certain aspects of contemporary mentality, sociohistorical circumstances, preferences regarding literary genres and other specific cultural factors.
Modern literary histories largely disregard the lost texts. The present book argues for the development of a new narrative which duly takes into account the lost texts as well as those that still exist.