"Hie lert uns der meister ": Latin Commentary and the German Fable, 1350–1500. By A. E. Wright. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 218. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2001. Pp. xxx + 293. $32.

This very impressive book is definitely not only of interest to Germanists, for it opens vast horizons for the study of Latin and vernacular fables in general. Fables were popular in medieval schools because they were especially suitable for the teaching and learning of Latin and, at the same time, for instructing young pupils in proper Christian behavior. For generations, Germanists have interpreted vernacular fable collections by comparing them to the critical editions of their Latin sources, whose editors, of course, had no interest in documenting the various ways these works were actually transmitted in the manuscripts considered irrelevant for the reconstruction of an archetype. But it is just these úirrelevant " manuscripts that contain the material thatûas Wright so clearly demonstratesûis of such great importance for our understanding of the úSitz im Leben " of fable collections on a whole, for what the critical editions don't reveal is that most manuscripts include academic commentaries, which were used extensively as sources for adaptations and translations of fables into German verse and prose.

Werner Williams-Krapp
Universität Augsburg