Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters: a census of manuscripts found in Eastern Europe and the former U.S.S.R., and: Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters: a census of manuscripts found in parts of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States of America: the works on letter-writing from the eleventh through the seventeenth century found in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Japan and the United States of America (review)

Reviews 249 extensive. The 48-page text is couched between a heavy 121 pages of introduction and 66 pages of commentary, and is further supplemented by a glossary, bibliography, and an appendix which reprints the earliest known manuscript version of the tract arguing for a vernacular Bible. Parker is stronger on the history and the Henrician context of religious controversy than he is on contemporary social and economic issues, and is particularly concerned to demonstrate the paraUels between the Dyaloge and other reformist texts. His o w n writing at times seems unnecessarily laboured, but he must be commended for bringing to the reader often lengthy extracts from source and paraUel works. This is a careful and scholarly edition of a fascinating text, which will promote studies in the areas of Reformation history and the emergent reformist literary tradition. Andrew McRae Department of English University of Sydney Polak, Emil J., Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Let a census ofmanuscriptsfound in Eastern Europe and theformer U.S.S.R. (Davis Medieval Texts and Studies 8), Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1993; cloth; pp. xxti, 324; R.R.P. US$120.50. Polak, Emil J . , Medieval and Renaissance Letter Treatises and Form Letters: a census ofmanuscriptsfound in parts of Western Europe, Japan, and the United States of America: the works on letter-writing from the elevent through the seventeenth century found in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Japan and the United States of America (Davis Medieval Texts and Studies 9), Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1994; cloth; pp. xvii, 475; R.R.P. US$186.50. In days gone by monks and gentlemen of leisure roamed European libraries for certain classes of historical material, compiling their results in large antiquarian almanacs. Nowadays it has to be the busy academic w h o scours the ancient repositories, mixing this kind of bottomless research with a crowded teaching, conference and 250 Reviews domestic load. In our o w n times, P. O. Kristeller's exhausting Iter Italicum has finally reached a state of accessibility scarcely dreamed of by the antiquarian compilers of Itinera and Reise in days of yore—the C D - R O M . The not dissimilar Herculean labours of P. O. Kristeller's student and admirer, Emil J. Polak, in the area of medieval Latin sources for the history of letter-writing and related skiUs, have been frequently and learnedly reviewed (perhaps most usefuUy by leading co-workers in the field, Martin Camargo, for the Journal of Medieval Latin, and Judith Rice-Henderson, for Rhetorica). All that can be done here is to bring to the notice of Australasian readers the dimensions of this massive one-man project, seen by Kristeller, its guiding spirit and Foreword-writer, as 'more useful than some of the recent attempts to use modern speculations for ambitious interpretations of the history of rhetoric that are based on only a few, or even on no original sources'. This reference to the recent popularity of the subject of the ancient art of rhetoric in its historical dimensions can be left aside: Polak's work is part of that tremendous modern, western, philological press for fuller and tighter knowledge of the past through its relicts, in this case 'treatises and manuals on composing letters, formularies, and form letters' ('official and personal letters clearly intended to serve as models'), 'collections of model parts of a letter, such as salutations and introductions . . . arenge, model speeches for secular oratory' (but without vernacular materials or treatises for the podesta), 'in sum, . . . practical rhetoric . . . centering on letters and speeches, but aUowing the inclusion of references to the ars dictandi which covered prose and poetic composition and with which letter-writing was often combined as a closely related genre'. Material excluded is honestly described, and, having read the introductions to each volume, the user should be in no doubt as to what to find and what not to look for. Volumes I and II survey some 450 libraries and archives, whilst a third volume is intended to complete the survey (in which the author visits Austria, France, Italy and the...