Disability in German-Speaking Europe: History, Memory, Culture. Edited by Linda Leskau, Tanja Nusser, and Katherine Sorrels. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2022. 249 pages + 4 images. $99.00 hardcover, $29.95 e-book.

ising question whether dreams are gendered in Middle High German narrative literature. While she never truly answers this question, Tuczay’s study reveals the different characteristics and functions of dreams in this literary tradition: prophetic and false, warning and healing, allegorical and biblical, and political. Three essays deserve special attention for their emphasis upon the didactic function of imagination. Robert Landau Ames’s and Edward Currie’s essays situate the discourse of two very different texts within the Mirror for Princes tradition. Ames investigates the depiction of the monstrous King Zahhāk in the Arabic Shāhnāmah (Book of Kings) by Firdawsı̄, showing how the Persian audience was to learn about good kingship through the vile and monstrous behavior of a bad king. Through a detailed discussion of council in the digressions found in the text, Currie makes the strong case that the medieval audience was to learn from the pitfalls of monstrous council at the court in Beowulf. Jane Beal sheds light on the didactic function of imagining animals and mythical beings in the medieval bestiary, with special focus on the Aberdeen Bestiary. A memory study of the best kind, Beal’s text reveals that the descriptions and depictions of these animals represented a type of memory work for the medieval audience, a means of contemplating the life of Christ. Much in this volume will be useful to scholars interested in imagination. They will find the most current evaluation of key issues informing the debate around imagination, including the meaning of dreams and travel literature, memory, questions of genre, issues of space, the Other, and reception. The great diversity and the connections among literary traditions and topics found in this collection show the universality of imagination. The book also uncovers varying modes of premodern understanding, interpretation, and reception of medieval and early modern imagination, bringing to light many interpretive issues regarding imagination that warrant further study. For these reasons, this book should figure in any scholar’s or advanced graduate student’s research of the premodern imagination.