M.-P.'s focus is the female body in a corpus drawn from 23 poets from Late Antiquity as far as Venantius Fortunatus. The corpus is dictated by the presence of the female body, creating an unusual study in so far as it is able to cover a range of genres and political or religious contexts on comparative terms. The book is structured in three sections according to ‘type’ of female: puella, sponsa, virgo. These are subdivided to consider each chronologically through its major appearances in the corpus, as well as in accordance with generic or thematic considerations. M.-P. approaches the female body as a means of interpreting social and private relationships in Late Antiquity, as well as in terms of the aesthetic, ethical and even eschatological concerns with which she believes it is charged. This results in an interesting combination of a study of the female body and a survey of the poetics of Late Antiquity across a range of contexts and genres. The introduction sets out some history of women's studies and the notion of interpreting the body, but this is not a theoretical work on the body per se; although M.-P. works to some extent to reclaim the female body in the different contexts in which she studies it, this book serves as much to advocate the analytical study of late antique poetry in general as it does to promote feminist readings. Specifically, the range of less familiar poets covered makes it a valuable contribution to the wider picture of scholarship on late antique poetry; the bibliography, with a list of available editions for the texts, is also helpful.

There is a short introduction to the study and its methods, and the chapters are clearly structured with individual contextualising introductions. The first chapter concerns the puella, who appears in poetry which engages with an elegiac, satirical or epic heritage, and who is utilised for understanding extremes of sensuality or chastity. The detailed readings of the poems begin with Arborius' Ad nympham nimis cultam, examining the presentation of female adornment and the privileging of natural female beauty. Much of the analysis considers the text and its depiction of female beauty within the wider elegiac tradition, evaluating the way in which it engages with and enlarges upon the poetic heritage. Simultaneously, M.-P. exploits the depiction of the female body as a focus for reconsidering the late antique aesthetic, providing in particular a close reading of the multiple levels of uariatio in lexis and syntax, the poem's rhetorical style, its formal qualities and the role of the female body as a metapoetic object. This detailed level of reading ecphrasis then permits M.-P. to demonstrate that the female body functions both as visual object and as an instrument of poetic pleasure. As a parallel to the puella and the image of female beauty in Arborius, M.-P. traces the theme of youth and beauty in the elegiac poems of Ausonius to illustrate further the emulation, renouatio and verbal trickery which are typical of late antique poetry. Within these texts, she demonstrates that the depiction of the female body is indicative of the wider concerns of the poet with regard both to his own poetic output and his place within his culture and heritage. The rest of the first section on the (broadly) ‘elegiac’ puella discusses the female characters of Maximianus' Elegies, who are cast among the poems' major themes of the pleasure and pain of love, the ravages of time, chastity and eroticism, in terms of how they are used to construct an image of the poet as subject in love, and to interrogate the place of the male in society.

The second half of the puella section turns, in broad terms, to epic, with Claudian, Dracontius and Reposianus used to illustrate, at one extreme, the triumph of sensuality and, at the other, the ravages of passion and the loss of virginity. In interpreting Claudian's De Raptu Proserpinae the focus is the narrative function of the female characters, but with particular consideration given to their visuality, the role of ecphrasis and the use of flower symbolism. In the epyllia of Dracontius, however, the female body is treated as a collection of coded poetic signs for expressing a discourse on emotion, traced in various manifestations across four different poems. Finally, in the presentation of the affair of Mars and Venus by Reposianus, M.-P. argues for a characterisation of Venus which celebrates the female body within a situation of natural harmony, and triumphs in Venus' victory over chastity.

The middle part traces the female body within the category of sponsa, first by looking at the character of Eve as she appears in a range of poetry, then focussing on two related genres of the epithalamium and funerary texts. The examination of Eve provides an opportunity to consider the body of the sponsa from a strictly Christian angle, although the structure of this section is also governed by the different treatments of Eve according to genre, theme and period. M.-P. considers Eve within poetry with a political and religious context, considering poems by Prudentius, Orentius and Marius Victor, and within biblical epic. This section uses Eve to cover a broad spread of ideas connected with the female body, both concerning the first marriage and Creation, and in the context of the Fall. M.-P. next considers epithalamia, both chronologically from Claudian through to Venantius Fortunatus, and at the same time through a range of beliefs on marriage, from sponsa as sensual body to sponsa as figure of continence. Third, the section on funerary presentations of the sponsa covers a wide range of depictions of the dead or dying woman, from the poetry of epitaphs and funerary discourse to the Alcestis Barcinonensis. Throughout, M.-P. recognises a range of generic affiliations, especially with elegy and epithalamium, but the central uniting feature of the readings is the situating of the female body within a network of family relationships, social expectations and domestic values.

The final section considers the body of the uirgo in three stages: the virgin martyr, the Christian virginal ideal and the Virgin Mary. For the first of these M.-P. traces the development of the story of a single female martyr, Agnes, through the depictions by Damasus, Ambrose and Prudentius, illustrating the development of a typology for the Christian martyr and her development as a symbolic model for Christians which transcends the weaknesses otherwise inherent in the female body. This trope is developed in the poetic advocacy of asceticism in which the virginal female body is promoted as an aspiration until it is developed fully into the theme of bride of Christ with the mystical epithalamium of Venantius Fortunatus, who reclaims the female body, animated by the love of Christ, as a central support for the Christian life. The study culminates, both thematically and chronologically, with the Virgin Mary. From her comparative lack of importance in biblical epic, M.-P. follows the development of Mary within poetry alongside the development of Marian theology, as female flesh, once condemned for the Fall, is recognised for its highest authority in Mary theotokos.

This is a book which uses the topos of the female body to undertake comparative readings of a large number of texts within a wide range of genres and contexts. While acknowledging the surprising stability of the image conceptually and aesthetically, it uses it as a prism for interpreting Late Antiquity from a social and moral perspective, as well as illustrating fundamental concerns with time, death, pleasure and salvation. However, its main value may be less as a reconsideration of the role of the female body as for its ability to provide a reconsideration of the aesthetic and social values of such a wide range of late antique poetry.