Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. By Andrew Taylor. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002. Pp. vi + 300; 31 illustrations. $55.

Andrew Taylor's book is far brighter in conception than execution. An idea of great promise, one meriting the most serious consideration, underlies his project. Taylor brings to manuscript study Donald McKenzie's "history of the book," a narrative conscious of the literary work, not as transcendent object, but one always mediated by its context. Taylor argues forcefully and plausibly that, in manuscript culture, such a context must always be double; the text will be conditioned by two broadly physical contexts or "situations "æits placement both within a specific book, typically in the Middle Ages miscellaneous, and within a specific library or circle of reader- and ownership.

Ralph Hanna
Keble College, Oxford