The Presentation of Authorship in Medieval German Narrative Literature 1220-1290. By Sebastian Coxon. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Pp. 254; 9 illustrations. $65.

For decades, questions of "the author" and authorship have been the focus of much scholarly controversy. It seems that the concept of authorship is especially difficult to grasp in medieval times, with the many unsolved questions concerning orality and literacy and the particularities in the process of literary transmission. In his book on the presentation of authorship in medieval German narrative literature from 1220 to 1290, Sebastian Coxon pays tribute to the importance of the crucial distinction between oral and literary tradition and transmission, and accordingly divides his book into two parts.

Claudia Bornholdt
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign