Scholars in the field of French literature of the Renaissance have been quite active during the past year, in keeping with a rising trend of interest that has been obvious for more than a decade. The various bibliographies—the Studies in Philology bibliography, the bibliography of the Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France, Professor Robert Taylor's listing of books in Renaissance News, etc.—all confirm, I believe, a healthy and growing concern for the sixteenth century in France. The SP bibliography, for example, included in 1949 some 202 items that related to the French Renaissance; the SP bibliography for 1962 contained 423 entries of books and articles involving the Renaissance in France, a pleasing statistical detail for seizièmistes on both sides of the Atlantic. As for journals, the Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance— in keeping with its ancestral connection with Abel Lefranc's Revue des études Rabelaisiennes and the later Revue du seizième siècle—continues to be the publication devoted primarily to the French Renaissance.

First of all, in the way of texts, our period lags behind the medieval period in production of modern editions. There have been few recent editions of Renaissance philosophical texts, moreover, to equal the high standard set by Richard LeMay with Pomponazzi's De Fato. But there have been facsimile reproductions, such as those of the Opera of Ficino and Valla, very useful for scholars who do not have access to the larger libraries. And we have the promise of editions of Valla's Dialectica (Zippel) and of his De voluptate, or rather De vero bono (De Panizza Lorch). The Campanella edition continues to come out in Italy. Dozens of interesting Renaissance philosophical texts are reproduced in the Manuscripta series of microfilms (cf. List No. 39, for example): these represent a very worth-while investment for smaller libraries willing to support Renaissance research.