The essays in this volume range widely. Studies of Visio dei and traces of apocatastasis; visionary literature cover the whole medieval period. The twelfth century is represented by Hildegard of Bingen (Expositiones evangeliorum and Symphonia) and Chrétien of Troyes (and later romances), the thirteenth century by Jacques de Vitry's Sermones and Hadewijch, the fourteenth century by Frauenlob (and Pearl), Marguerite Porete, Dante, Suso and Chaucer. Fifteenth-century drama is dealt with, together with sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Irish bardic poetry. However, I regret to have to inform the potential reader, that, with a few exceptions, most of the essays collected here are, for two reasons, rather disappointing. First nearly all the contributors show an astonishing ignorance of the work already done in this field. No one has consulted, for example, the almost 400 pages of Cieli e terre nei secoli XI–XII (Milan 1998), nor the 450 pages of P. Jezler (ed.), Himmel, Hölle, Fegefeuer: das Jenseits im Mittelalter (Zürich 1994), not to mention older works like J. Bautz's Der Himmel (Mainz 1881) or the lemma ‘ciel’ in the equally unnoticed Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ii/2 (Paris 1923), 2474-511. I cannot, for instance, see much use in reading the few pages on the theology of the visio dei printed here, when there is a much fuller study in the (again unnoticed) Dictionnaire de spiritualité, iii (Paris 1957), 883–929. A similar critique is true in respect of most of the other papers. Second, most contributors appear to be unfamiliar with medieval eschatology and write from a standpoint restricted to questions of literary history, showing more interest in stylistic techniques than in the imaginary of the other world. Discussion of the theme in the context of medieval art and music is completely absent, as if there were no representations of the subject there (one section is indeed entitled ‘The art of heaven’, meaning, of course, exclusively poetry). To mention another example, a rather unsatisfying ‘lectura Dantis’, dealing only with Paradiso xxviii, does not help much to advance understanding of how the medievals envisaged heaven. There are three papers, however, that can be recommended: that on on the access to the other world in medieval visions by R. Easting, which is based on an outstanding knowledge of the sources and literature; that by B. Newman on heaven in medieval poems, because it provides a translation and interpretation of Frauenlob's Marienleich, which is otherwise inaccessible to Anglophone medievalists; and P. Dronke's ‘completeness of heaven’, because it hints at a tradition very rarely to be found in medieval texts, that of the final salvation of all souls.