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Going beyond the work of Frances Yates and Paolo Rossi, Carruthers examines the ways in which memory techniques were taught. She also analyzes the role of memory in the creative processes ("memorial culture") of the elite during the Middle Ages. Carruthers concludes that the growth of the written medium did not fundamentally alter the crucial role of memory in medieval culture. She describes the influence of ancient Graeco-Roman models of memory (e.g., memory as an architectural edifice or as a wax tablet) on the creation of the ars memorativa in the 13th century. Both memory development and reading were ethical activities because they "fixed" important texts in the mind for rumination and for later explication in writing or speaking. In both form and function, the medieval commentary appears, then, as an "applied mnemonic" to aid digestion of the text and to internalize or "institutionalize" it. Illumination, too, serves the same function as a "memorial hook." Carruthers includes in her appendixes translated texts of Hugh of St. Victor, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Bradwardine on memory. Useful primarily for graduate students and faculty. -C. W. Clark, St. Andrews Presbyterian College