As the title indicates, Kivistö’s book deals with verse satire written in Latin between 1500 and 1800. The analysis focuses and is built on an imposing number of satirical works composed by a wide-ranging array of European authors (including literati from Italy, Poland, France, Croatia, Britain, Germany, Spain and the Low Countries) with different cultural and religious backgrounds (encompassing both Catholic and Protestant authors).

The study of the literary material is arranged on the basis of a thematic principle. Kivistö identifies seven major constellations of topics that are treated in Neo-Latin verse satire and devotes one of the seven chapters that make up her volume to each of them. Chapter 1 focuses on the literary justification of satirical indignation, a key feature of satirical works. Chapter 2 addresses the educational scope of satire, while chapter 3 concerns ethical reflections on poverty and tranquillity of mind. Chapter 4 is devoted to the recurrent image (and its implications) of satire as a medical treatment for human behaviour and society. Chapter 5 investigates religious satire, exploring its prophetic techniques, biblical exegesis and pious anger. Chapter 6 analyses positive and negative exemplarity in satirical verse and the affective language of moral monuments. Finally, chapter 7 centres on the commonplace praising of rural ease and examines how it was both reiterated and reinterpreted in Neo-Latin satires. The seven chapters are not merely juxtaposed to each other, but appear to be arranged in a deliberate sequence. The author dedicates a short paragraph at the end of each chapter to introducing the theme that is developed in the following one and linking it to the previous chapter.

By adopting this topic-based approach, Kivistö offers readers a clear vision of the polyhedrality of the genre and the wide gamut of literary and ethical motives that it displays. Undoubtedly, such a choice does not come without inconveniencies. A different arrangement might have avoided, for instance, placing the analysis of the works by the same author in different chapters, in cases where their satires deal with different topics. Nonetheless, if readers are interested in the œuvre of an individual satirist, they can navigate the monograph and track all the sections concerning them by means of the full name index at the end of the volume. Despite this caveat, I consider the theme-based organization of the material Kivistö opted for to be beneficial as it overcomes the potentially rigid partitions that form when an examination is based on mere chronological or geographical criteria.

The thematic approach followed throughout the volume also underpins the structure of all the chapters, in each of which the works are arranged in sections devoted to a specific sub-topic of the major theme. Such a taxonomy helps readers to navigate the chapters and makes the clusters of thematically coherent works more perspicuous. This manner of examining the material shows that the satirical genre (or, sometimes, even the poems of a single author) could give voice to both a specific notion as well as its contrary, such as, for example, those works that praise the didactic function of satire, on the one hand, and, on the other, show the limits of their educational teachings. Furthermore, the sub-thematic organization of the chapters lets Kivistö concentrate not just on the most frequently adopted ways of articulating topics, but also on unusual formulas. The scope of such a detailed analysis contributes to proving the vitality of the genre and the inventiveness of the Neo-Latin satirists, as happens in chapter 7, for instance, when Kivistö does not simply explore the works of authors who praised the humble, tranquil, pleasurable country life, but also examines those which – like the satires of the Croatian poet Junije Rustić – lampooned it on the basis of its uncertainties when compared to urban life.

The richness and perspicuity of Kivistö’s analysis is due to the remarkably wide-ranging array of literary material she investigates, encompassing the works of dozens of poets. Yet, beyond the impressive number of sources, this volume also has the merit of accurately setting each literary phenomenon and topic it discusses in a longue durée perspective. Kivistö offers succinct but insightful historical overviews of the major themes at the centre of each chapter, showing how these topics were handled in classical antiquity, in order to enable readers to appreciate the novelty or continuity of the approach to core themes of Neo-Latin poets. These overviews are not just limited to tracing the roots of themes back to the Roman satirists who employed them, but they also take account of sources ranging from Hellenistic philosophical works to the texts of the Church Fathers, and up to the Neo-Latin satires of Italian humanists. Although Kivistö’s volume centres on the works written in the period 1500–1800, it also sensibly and creditably expands the chronological limits of this research.

The volume is not merely a valuable resource for Neo-Latin scholars or those working on classical reception, but also for historians of education and schooling (chapter 2, in particular), historians of medicine (chapter 4) and of religion (chapters 5 and 6), not to mention those who study vernacular satires of the period under investigation. Kivistö clearly states in her introduction that she will not compare ‘Neo-Latin texts with those written in national tongues’ (p. 19) – which is undoubtedly a pity per se, but it is more than understandable – and yet it is to be hoped that the very large set of data and analyses in Kivistö’s book will be put to good use by those literary scholars working on early modern vernacular satire.