Clever Little Books explores the role of Latin commentaries on the Roman poet Martial as a medium for the transmission of sexual knowledge among a male elite in early modern Europe.

Moulton Ian Frederick :

Ian Frederick Moulton is President’s Professor of English and Cultural History at Arizona State University.

Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Sussex:
“In writing about 'clever little books' Ian Moulton has produced his own brilliant book, a taut and clearly focused analysis of Martial’s impact on renaissance sexuality. Moulton shows that Martial was both prurient and moralistic, denigrating many forms of sexual behaviour in his satirical epigrams, which were read with a mixture of enthusiasm and horror by the male educated elite.

Heather James, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of Southern California :
“In Clever Little Books, Ian Moulton explores the defenses as well as the more familiar denigrations of sex acts as they are represented in humanist scholarship and commentaries on Martial’s epigrams. Martial meant his poems to be bracing and Moulton cleaves to his chosen poet’s determination to arouse mixed emotions and concentrated thought. The chapter on Jonson’s heavily annotated quarto of Martial’s epigrams is a welcome contribution to Jonson criticism. It also serves to focus attention on the Italian humanist traditions that tend to be sidelined in recent criticism of the English Renaissance. This book insists that scholars look seriously at the classical models of writing on sex and stigma.”

Alan Stewart, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University:
“Clever Little Books is an engaging and enlightening read. Ian Moulton reveals how Latin commentaries on Martial’s celebrated epigrams became a crucial medium for sexual knowledge among the educated elites of Renaissance Europe. In addition to the guaranteed interest of Martial’s epigrams, the materials that the author treats—commentaries, editions, annotations—are fascinating in their own right, and largely unknown, even to an academic readership. While bringing to bear a tremendous amount of scholarly work, Moulton remains a clear and direct guide: Clever Little Books an important contribution to studies of Martial and the classical tradition in the Renaissance, and to the history of sexuality.”