Rewriting the reception of the past may be even harder than rewriting the past. We might debate what constitutes valid study in eras we cannot witness, but we seem to be willing or even driven to believe that the sinuous connections between then and now have long been established. It is hard to imagine the underlying tale being rewritten. This volume aims to do exactly that. By offering a wide range of medieval readings of antiquity it offers new understandings of--and approaches to--the innovations that pervade the classical tradition. As the Preface claims, “Notre collection d’études interroge la transmission et la reception des oeuvres classiques au Moyen Âge avec une attention particulière pour les modalités matérielles de leur lecture et de leur exploitation, et pour leur influence sur la culture de regions et d’époques différentes” (9). While not a book to read from cover to cover, this volume queries the debt medieval texts owe to the literature of antiquity and, in so doing, pries apart connections and establishes others as it shows a way to future research and formulations. This is not a book for the faint of heart, but the results are worth the effort.

The chapters are organized in three sections, clearly laid out in the subtitle and preface: transmission and reuse of texts, exegetical activity, and appropriation. The first section, arranged chronologically, addresses ways in which classical texts were received and transmitted throughout the Middle Ages. The emphasis here is on the logistical: how were the works read and copied, where did they appear, when were they inserted in other works. The first intervention by Adriano Russo confronts anew the transmission of Anthologia Latina 709 Thrax puer, a medieval text asserted to be ancient, whose appearance in a startling array of editions and miscellanies shows how works take on lives of their own as the accretions of time contribute to their auctoritas and backstories are created despite a lack of secure evidence. Other chapters in this section turn more to direct citation and its diverse uses in florilegia. By tracing the transmission of the passages, we come to better understand the production and use of the compilations, from a collection of school texts of prosody from the ninth century that can be traced to a common source (Angela Cossu), to the impact a single well-placed (and abridged) codex (Vat. Lat. 4929) can have on the versions of ancient texts that are passed on to posterity (Yannick Brandenburg), to the mysterious provenance of Florilegium Gallicum (Silverio Franzoni) that bears no author, title, or preface; his focus lies in sorting out its composition and intended audience.

The second section turns to the ways in which canonical works of antiquity, specifically poetry, were read and explained in the Middle Ages. The first of these, by Daniela Gallo and Stefano Grazzini, looks at the scholia of Juvenal’sSatires contained in three manuscripts from a variety of eras and argues for the importance of considering the interaction of commentaries in the context of the received text. Camilla Poloni focuses on a passage from Eunuchus in the commentary on Terence by Donatus found in nineteen manuscripts from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries that gained a life of its own. In the case of Lucan, Bénédicte Chachuat studies the fate of Pharsalia 7.104-107, which circulated autonomously and acquired new meanings and readings the further it traveled from its original source. For Ovid, study of the life, as it were, of an error (Hercules' labors were for Iole not Omphale) enables Lucia Degiovanni to trace the thread of transmission which leads to its own innovations.

The third section derives from the first two. With the deeper understanding the first section offers the ways that ancient texts were transmitted, combined with a renewed appreciation of the kinds of interpretations those texts underwent. This last section offers an overview of the how’s and why’s of the transformative adaptation the rewritings often produced, as well as the roles such reworkings served in contemporary intellectual discussions. In this section we are first offered Jean-Yves Tilliette on imitations of Horace from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that draw on canonical classical phrases to communicate a contemporary message. Rewritings of nineteen Declamationes maiores by Pseudo-Quintilian, mistakenly known as Excerpta Parisina and Monacensia, Riccardo Macchioro posits as being of medieval authorship; while the identity of the author is hypothetical, the case is carefully constructed. Ivo Wolsing shows how the heritage of classical epic and its portrayal of East and West are adopted and reworked in l’Alexandreis of Gautier de Châtillon and the Ylias of Joseph of Exeter to address current concerns; and Elisa Lonati presents Helinand de Froidmont as a reader of antiquity who, in turn, paved the way for the encyclopedic tradition that followed.

By discarding the notion of an overarching narrative and offering instead discrete studies of the complex interaction between ancient and medieval, we also dispose of the notion of teleology. The force is still forward driven--we are after all studying cause and effect--but the story has become more involved as we see how a given formulation was adapted by a later author. Time and again the authors raise the issue of provenance as time and again the source of a text, citation, or tradition is shown to be fictional or questionable. As a result, reception is placed front and center. How is the past important to the texts of the Middle Ages? When there are so many instances of drawing on what turns out to be a fictional or unknown source, when the classical tradition seems to be a field of infinite regress, or at the least one based on very shifting sands, the question the volume raises is critical to all historic literary study.

There are of course many other angles one might take. What about other early traditions? How might other literatures have influenced or affected the reception of Greco-Roman antiquity? A concluding chapter would have helped clarify the overarching themes of the volume. But the unraveling of assumed narratives this volume accomplishes, together with the adoption of meticulous and persuasive methodologies that speak clearly of the importance of context, both physical and historic, suggest the first steps toward a reimagining of the study of the classical tradition, or traditions, as well as a recasting of our understanding of the role the past played in the sense of the present for authors, readers, and educators of the Middle Ages.