The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller.Carlo Ginzburg

trius and first included in Froben's edition of 1515. Since Erasmus himself apparently supplied part of the original commentary and all of the later additions, it is a valuable guide to his sources and his point of view, but until very recently it has been ignored by interpreters of the Moria. In the current edition, it has largely been preserved, either in the original Latin, in English translation, or in a shortened paraphrase. Despite the commentary's jibe at those who take scholarly pride in citing "capitulum, paragraphum, columnam, denique versum" (see p. 180, 1. 919 n.), readers will be grateful to Professor Miller for locating the precise source of Listrius'/Erasmus' many references and for supplementing them with additional citations from collections of proverbs, from classical literature, philosophy, and history, from patristic and scholastic theology, and from Erasmus' own works, most notably from the Adagia, which Erasmus had just completed when he wrote the Moria. Tracking down such extensive and varied sources is no small task, and Professor Miller's labors should help reveal the richly allusive texture on which so many of the work's ironies are based. Professor Miller's wideranging notes also provide helpful commentary on Moria's Latin and Greek puns, on terms and usages not included in modern dictionaries of medieval Latin, on references to Renaissance costume, iconography, medical theory, and ecclesiastical practices, and on historical events or personages glanced at in the satire. In short, his annotations prove him equal to the extraordinary demands placed on an editor by Erasmus' penchant for learned joking, by his broad reading, and by his panoramic criticism of Renaissance society. Erasmus, who spent so much effort in making the classics of the past accessible to his contemporaries, would surely be pleased at the learning and scholarly care Professor Miller has brought to this edition of his own satirical classic.