"Cui dono lepidum novum libellum?"

During the sixteenth century, the traditional act of dedicating a text took on a new meaning due to the wider dissemination of the printed book. As the dedication and other paratexts thus became an almost indispensable part of the publication, they merit careful examination by those who study the presentation and impact of any printed work. This book presents an interdisciplinary synthesis of the nature of the sixteenth-century dedication. It will appeal to not only Neo-Latinists and musicologists but also historians of the book, philologists, and others who are interested in the role of paratexts in providing biographical information and bridging the gap between the reading public and the enclosed world of the book.

Supplementa Humanistica Lovaniensia 23