The volume analyses the relationship between the Italian peninsula and the linguistic, literary and intellectual history of its classical heritage. The ten essays are divided into three parts: ‘Latin, Greek and Italian’, ‘Hellenism and the Latin Humanists’ and ‘The Classical Tradition in Poetry’, and there is a general introduction by the editors. In their preface, the editors state that the volume, grown out of a lecture series and a conference of the same title held in 2005 at the University of Warwick, addresses the role of Greek and Latin languages and classical texts in Renaissance poetry, that is ‘how the languages were mastered and used, and how the texts were understood and appropriated’ (p. vii). The introduction contextualises the discussion that follows, which ‘aims to stimulate fresh approaches rather than to offer the broader or more balanced coverage offered by existing “companions” to the classical tradition’ (p. vii). The collection deals with only three areas of the much vaster issue of Italy's classical heritage: ‘the evolving perceptions of ancient languages; the impact of classical learning on literary and intellectual history; and the implications of Greek and Roman influences and models for the contemporary interpretation of some classical authors’ (p. 3). By acknowledging the collection's diversity and the necessary partiality of the choice of articles that it presents, the editors also emphasise its main focus, which they consider the most distinctive feature of the classical tradition in Italian literature and thought: ‘the dialogue … between the languages, literatures and ideas of Greece and Rome and their modern legacies’ (p. 3).

Part 1 deals with the interrelation between Italian and the classical languages. G. Lepschy, ‘The Classical Languages and Italian: Some Questions of Grammar and Rhetoric’, examines the problem from a grammatical point of view. He considers the three languages first in pairs (Greek and Latin, Latin and Italian, Greek and Italian), and then all together, and is concerned with what he refers to as the factual historical relation among the three languages in the context of Indo-European comparative grammar (p. 29). In the second part of his essay, L. discusses questions of syntax by looking at some infinitival constructions in which Greek, Latin and Italian are linked together in interesting ways. P. Burton, ‘“Itali dicunt ozie”: Describing Non-Standard and Low-Register Speech in Latin’, is the only contributor that does not deal directly with developments within the Italian legacy of antiquity. B. is concerned with rhetoricians' and grammarians' responses to non-standard Latin in antiquity and, by looking at the discrepancies between ancient and modern terminologies and conceptualisations of the varieties of Latin, provides a relevant antecedent to Renaissance debates on Latin that are more central to the volume's scope. The last short essay of Part 1, ‘“Utriusque linguae peritus”: How Did One Learn Greek and Acquire the Text?’, by N. Wilson, surveys the place of Greek learning in humanist education and serves as an introduction to the second group of essays, which focus on the impact of Greek on Renaissance Italian culture. This part opens with ‘Alberti and the Classical Canon’, in which M. McLaughlin examines ‘Alberti's personal canon of classical texts at a key stage in his development … the 1430s, and to explore the tensions in his writings between Ciceronian influence and its alternatives’ (p. 73). L. Panizza, ‘Plutarch's Camma: a Greek Literary Heroine's Adventures in Renaissance Italy’, explores the fortunes of Camma, a Plutarchean character symbolising the virtuous woman and the model wife, whose story features prominently in Latin and Italian translation and appears in treatises that ennoble marriages and the constancy and fortitude of wives. In the last paper of Part 2, ‘Italy, France and the Classical Tradition: the Origins of the Philological Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics’, J. Kraye focusses on the Florentine Hellenist Pier Vettori, ‘perhaps the most devoted of Poliziano's disciples’ (p. 120), and his engagement with the philological problems presented by the text of the Ethics: K. shows how Vettori presented his work, critical of Leonardo Bruni's Latin translation, in the tradition of Poliziano's scholarship. Part 3, about the classical tradition in poetry, begins with C. Villa, ‘“Unicuique suum”: Observations on Dante as a Reader of Classical Authors’. V. discusses Dante's engagement in the Commedia with the notion of renewal (renouatio), also intended as renouatio librorum: the procedure of ‘renewing’ classical books by rewriting their stories. ‘If novelty consists of re-interpreting tradition in an original fashion’, states V., ‘… Dante is the ideal interpreter of stories that have already been told, and which he is known to have studied’ (p. 144). J. Usher, ‘Petrarch's Diplom of Crowning: the Privilegium laureationis’, investigates the diploma (priuilegium) that Petrarch received in Rome in 1341 upon obtaining the poetic laurels, a document believed to have been drafted to a large extent by Petrarch himself, and assesses the special significance of the laurel crown for Petrarch and in his work. S. Carrai, ‘Putting Italian Renaissance Lyric in Order: Petrarch's Canzoniere and the Latin Liber carminum’, treats aspects of the fortuna of Petrarch's Canzoniere in later Italian literature analysing the history of the canzoniere form in the Italian lyric poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. In the last essay, ‘A Roman Dialogue with Virgil and Homer: Capilupi, the Cento and Rome’, G.H. Tucker examines the Virgilian centones by Lelio Capilupi, dealing mostly with the ruins of ancient Rome. T. convincingly shows how Capilupi redeploys some of Virgil's poetic devices for structures exceeding the poetic discourse by reflecting on the architectural achievements of mid-sixteenth century papal Rome and thus offering ‘a self-conciously artistic testimony’ (p. 226).

This collection is a very valuable tool for students of the Renaissance and of the history of the classical tradition. By deliberately juxtaposing discussions on very well-known authors with essays on ‘figures who have been overlooked by conventional literary and cultural history … the diversity of this collection is designed to provide a new set of contexts and stimuli for future research’ (p. 3). And I would say that it is a good start.