had definitively reoriented assumptions about the mechanisms of evolution in the direction of natural selection from among randomly generated variants, it was possible—indeed, it must have seemed natural—to espouse an evolutionary hypothesis that was based on reasoned assertions about a fundamental role for onomatopoeia in building human language. This position is similar to Lamarck’s approach, reasoning that anatomical evolution must be linked to such things as successive generations of giraffes extending their necks ever further to increase browsing range. Ultimately, of course, less self-apparent but far more powerful explanations would supplant these “reasoned” approaches. Random variation coupled with natural selection became the accepted paradigm for evolution, and Martinet’s double articulation made arbitrariness a necessity and a virtue. The arbitrariness of sounds allows infinite possibilities for creating meaning starting from a small set of semantically neutral sound segments that take on meaning only when used in combination to form monèmes (morphemes). Hence the explanatory value of onomatopoeia has been banished from the main stage that it occupied for Nodier and relegated to the status of a side-show of curiosities. Jeandillou clearly regrets this demotion, for it undermines the ennoblement of onomatopoeia, formerly the device of poets (oft cited by Nodier, especially “Eligia de Philomela,” which is included, with lengthy commentary, in Nodier’s 1828 edition and in the present reedition) and relegates it to less respectful domains such as barnyard noises and bande dessinée sound effects. This book is of primary value to those interested in sound symbolism and in the history of evolutionary approaches to language. University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Michael D. Picone WUNDERLI, PETER, éd. Le Nouveau Testament de Lyon (ms. Bibliothèque de la ville A.i.54-Palais des arts 36). Tübingen: Francke, 2009. Vol. 1, Introduction et édition critique. ISBN 978-3-772-083167. Pp. x +534. 128 a. Vol. 2, Analyse de la langue, lexique et index des noms. ISBN 978-3-772-083594. Pp. 317. 76 a. The art of textual editing has clearly moved into the Internet age, no matter which format is chosen for new editions. Under review here is a new print edition , in two volumes, of the Nouveau Testament de Lyon (henceforth NTestLyon) in a thirteenth-century Old Occitan translation. The punctilious introduction to NTestLyon recounts various starts and stops along the road to publication (“un long chemin de souffrance” 1.13), spanning more than 40 years. Wunderli was fully aware of a parallel effort undertaken by M. Roy Harris and Peter Ricketts for the Concordance de l’occitan médiéval and available online at since early 2011. Harris’s edition of the Cathar Ritual (appended to our text) is also available online at the RIALTO site, as is his edition of the epistle to the Laodiceans. The older Clédat edition of most of the New Testament, as digitized by Duvernoy, is found at . Wunderli confesses to reservations regarding online materials, which he views as potentially ephemeral and to which he prefers the more assured shelf life of print. Nonetheless, French Review readers will appreciate the plethora of digitized resources available at their fingertips for this text and for Occitan in general—not only the works mentioned above, but also most of the major Occitan dictionaries, and notably access to the NTestLyon lexical entries in Reviews 229 the Dictionnaire de l’occitan médiéval, found if you type “NTestLyonW” into a Google search window. The manuscript of NTestLyon was lost to view for 500 years, from the time of its creation in Northern Italy until Boissier de Sauvages’s 1756 Dictionnaire languedocien -francois. The text (1250–1300) is composed in a scripta rather than a single dialect of western Languedocian, incorporating a few traces of Gascon and Béarnais as well as vestiges from the Vaudois valleys and northern Italy—in all likelihood because the text moved around throughout the Cathar domain. It represents one of the earliest complete translations of the New Testament into any Romance tongue, and the earliest extant full-length piece of Occitan prose. It also speaks to the history of the Cathars, since the text was composed well after the croisade contre les...