[Review of: Sari Kivistö (2002) Creating Anti-Eloquence. `Epistolae obscurorum virorum' and the Humanist Polemics on Style]
eval neologisms and usages. It also assesses his use of classical quotations and allusions, carefully describes the manuscript and printed sources, and ends with a detailed bibliographical description of each source used. There are several helpful appendices: a list of abbreviations; an extensive bibliography of modern scholarship; indices of proper names, of Latin and Greek words and syntax, and variant Latin spellings; and an index of classical, patristic, and humanistic sources. Another appendix assesses (with negative results) the evidence for deliberate use of prose rhythm (clausus) in Agricola's letters. There is also a list of minor textual variants, and a concluding chronological list of all fifty-five letters. In sum, the editors have produced an excellent edition of an important source for the history of early German and Dutch humanism. Their book offers a glimpse — the best we are likely ever to have — into those obscure decades when Germanic humanism was laying the foundations of the dominant position it held on the eve of the Reformation.