This book is essentially the first part of Mattia Cavagna’s 2006 Sorbonne-Bologna dissertation, with only minor modifications, as per the author’s own admission on page 8. If it bears the unmistakable marks of a dissertation, it is none the worse for that. In this case, given the relative obscurity of the subject and the general lack of attention it has received from modern scholars, the survey of earlier studies, the état présent, and the systematic presentation of the texts under consideration are all welcome. Scholars are already in Cavagna’s debt for his 2008 edition of three late French prose versions of the Vision de Tondale (Jean de Vignay, David Aubert, and Regnaud le Queux), which must now be considered an indispensable complement to this wide-ranging study. The three chapters of part 1 (27–116, 117–306, 307–401) of the book are devoted to a detailed examination of the three Latin versions of the Visio Tnugdali, the first by the original author, Brother Marcus, and the redactions interpolated into the Chronicon of Hélinand de Froidmont and the Speculum historiale of Vincent of Beauvais. Cavagna situates the text of Marcus, likely written in and for one of the Schottenklöster of southern Germany, in its theological context before looking at the function of the inserted redactions in the work of Hélinand and Vincent.

The remainder of this part of the book is mainly devoted to the place of the Latin Visio in the broader corpus of vision literature and then to its presentation of the otherworlds of hell, purgatory, and paradise. The rich literature of vision, including Dante, the Visio Pauli, and the Purgatorio sancti Patricii, provides a wealth of comparative material exploited to good purpose by Cavagna. Topics covered here include the nature of the vision, the roles of the subject and the narrator, the vision as allegory and penitence, and the voyage and guidance through the otherworld. The emphasis here is generally on the Latin Visio, with occasional excursions into the French versions, the latter being more fully dealt with in part 2 (405–570), a classification and study of the eleven texts in the langue d’oïl. In a sense, this part will be the most valuable to scholars of Old French as it lays out clearly the vernacular reception of the Latin Visio in medieval francophonia, from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries. Classifications by date, source, manuscripts, and geographic provenance (405–12) lead into critical assessments of the individual texts (413–570). The content and length of these case studies vary somewhat, depending on the amount of information they provide and what Cavagna appears to consider the significant aspects and merits of each version (23). This leads inevitably to a certain imbalance, albeit largely justified. Since Cavagna does not duplicate information already provided about Jean de Vignay, David Aubert, and Regnaud le Queux in his 2008 edition, the reader will need to have that to hand when reading the second part of this study. The book, which has only a brief conclusion (571–73), also includes a text and translation of the prologue of Brother Marcus (575–78), a list of manuscripts of the Latin versions (578–83), an exhaustive bibliography (585–653), an index of proper names 965–61), and an index of biblical references (663–65).

It is rewarding, if not easy reading, informed by particular attention to the literary and cultural contexts of the Visio and its French versions, to manuscript context, and to regional and chronological reception and diffusion of all the texts considered. Paradoxically, despite the highly organized nature of this book (the table of contents alone takes up seven pages [667–73]), it has something of the fragmentary about it, and parts of it may be more conducive to consulting than reading. This is a minor quibble, and Cavagna’s book is an indispensable and important contribution to the understanding of the Visio Tnugdali, both latine and gallice.