Reviews 245 notes where Hesketh remarks on the peculiar difficulties facing his ingenuity as editor, where he must explain, for example, why he has had to modify ever so slightly his printed text to make sense of it for the reader, are particularly enlightening. Also, the general philological guidance given, with references to modem authorities on certain topics, for example the seven deadly sins (note to lines 3095-206) is most helpful. Certainly any medievalists wishing to read the Lumere as Lais in Hesketh's text, as published in volumes 1 and 2, will find their pleasure augmented substantially by having at hand these excellent notes. With the publication ofthisfinalvolume, the Lumere as Lais is now really accessible to a wide public of medievalists who will be pleased to note that the famous A N T S continues to maintain its high standards of text editing. Maxwell J. Walkley University of Sydney Hollander, Robert, Dante: A Life in Works, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001; cloth; pp. xvi, 222; R R P US$25.00; ISBN 0-300-08494. Hollander's short and readable book has a number of rivals (not least, in Engl Stephen Bemrose's admirable A New Life ofDante, Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000; Rachel Jacoff [ed.], The Cambridge Companion to Dante, Cambridge: University Press 1993; George Holmes, Dante [Past Masters], Oxford: University Press, 1980; William Anderson, Dante the Maker, London: Routledge, 1980). For those really interested in Dante's life (with the works fitted into the lived pattern), the Bemrose volume must be preferred, but for those primarily interested in the works themselves, with all the nuances of m o d e m scholarship on them worked into a lucid and informative discussion by someone who knows both the sources and the modern writings intimately, Hollander's work can be warmly recommended. The initial chapter, which covers Dante's life, is less satisfactory. One feels that Hollander is less at home here. The Black / White Guelfdivision is dated far earlier than most would date it (p. 5; Bemrose p. 45); was Dante that 'happy' 1312-21? (p. 6 - see pp. 42-43 and Dante Gabriel Rossetti Poems and Translations 1850-1870, London: Oxford University Press, 1965 pp. 48ff 'Dante at Verona'!); Hollander's stress on Dante's 'writerly"qualities, his urge to be 'special', 'to storm the Olympus ofFlorentine lyric' (p. 12), perhaps needs to be contextualised more than i t is (why should Dante have felt this way, w h y in this particular fashion, 246 Reviews h o w untypical was he, etc.). But there is much here that is memorable. The uniqueness and importance of the Vita Nuova axe well stressed (pp. 14, 40) and its function as a precursor of the Divine Comedy itself interestingly brought out (esp. pp. 25,28-29). The emphasis upon Dante's use ofchiasmus (p. 31) supports m y own contention in 'Realism, rhetoric and revelation: Dante's use ofhistory in the Purgatorio' (Margaret Baker and Diana Glenn [eds.] Dante Colloquia in Australia [1982-1999] Adelaide, South Australia: Australian Humanities Press, 2000 [pp.165-91] p. 168). Hollander stresses very usefully that Dante's 'vernacular has the power and status ofLatin' (p. 32), and the relationship between the 'Active' and the 'historical' in Dante's works is very well discussed (pp. 33-39). The high point ofDante's political career is interestingly related to an apparent absence of literary activity (p. 44 and cf. p. 129: 'None of Dante's writings between 1283 and 1305 or so shows any marked interest in political ideas, despite his vigorous involvement in Florentine civic life between 1295 and 1301'), and the discussion of the Convivio ('one of therichestand most intriguingly abandoned works that w e possess', p. 88) and De vulgari eloquentia is ample and suggestive (though i t would have been nice to have secured a comment on the highly original approach ofWarman Welliver Dante in Hell: the De vulgari eloquentia: introduction, te translation, commentary, Ravenna: Longo Editore, 1981). The Commedia itself is discussed with great authority and insight. Dating, truth, allegory, historicity, the 'rediscovery' of Dante at the end ofthe eighteenth century (p. 104), the classification of...