'Johnson's book breaks important new ground in both medieval and Renaissance studies. he focuses on a era that is just beginning to be considered on its own terms by scholars, and he presents a provocative and - to my mind - wholly justified rethinking of traditional units of literary periodization. By stressing the dynamic interrelationships between late medieval and Renaissance ... Read moredevelopments in France, he not only sheds new light on both but also suggests a more profitable and historically valid way of conceiving of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries as constituting a whole. Johnson's close readings illuminate a number of little-known but important texts, and his concept of literary and verbal play gives interpretive coherence and unity to the brilliantly heterogeneous literary corpus he studies, which ranges from courtly lyric poetry to didactic prose.' Kevin Brownlee, University of Pennsylvania Show Less