?This unusual work is an extended exploration of self-referentiality in Roman poetry. While discussion of the subject has long been a staple of classical literary criticism, it has never received the sustained attention it gets from D. here. The book breaks neatly into halve. The first is dedicated to the adumbration of largely semiotic theoretical bearings, with particular focus on a given poems?s ?textuality? (?). The second half of the book is the inductive converse of the first, examining various enfiguration of autoreferenciality in the prologues of Terence, Lucretius? Hymn to Venus, Virgil?s Sixth Eclogue, Propertius 4.2, Ovid Ars Am.1 , and Silius Italicus? Punica 11. (?) Latin verse is seldom quoted in the original, an exigency perhaps dictated by the need to limit the size of an already oversized book, but positively troubling in the context of the close analysis D. undertakes (?). Yet there are an enormous number of insightful observations here, and the extended attention to textual reflexivity, both in theoretical and practical-analytical terms, is singularly valuable. D. is a good reader of poetry, and his books has very little of the abstract aridity or rebarbative discourse one might have seen. (?) The theory section is too extensive for summary here, but it can be said that D. makes a case (?). Much of D.?s study (?) covers familiar ground, but it does so with an almost relentless intensity of regard and in the process brings to light numerous compelling and imaginative observations, making this ambitious book a valuable and engaging resource.? (D.M. HOOLEY in The Classical Review (New Series), 1998, pp.40-41). From the library of Prof. Carl Deroux.