Though contextualization is the unifying theme, the 27 studies define it variously as earlier research, context of culture, context of genres, text types, semantic fields, communications situation and utterance context, or diachronic and diatopic anchoring. Among the topics are language periodization and the concept of middle, normalizing the word forms in the Ayenbite of Inwyt , naming and avoiding naming objects of terror, Chaucer's poetic adaptation of the medieval book curse, and Middle English prosodic innovations and their testability in verse. Most of the contributions are from an international conference held in Hanasaari, Espoo, Finland, in June 1997. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)