This volume was presented to Professor Engstrom in celebration of his sixty-fifth birthday. Its sixteen studies, contributed by colleagues, friends, and former students, move from the late Urban T. Holmes's article on the Middle Ages down to the nineteenth century, with articles encompassing various aspects of French, Spanish, and Italian literatures.

This is a study that traces the influence of drugs on French literature. The first three chapters acquaint the reader with various aspects of the use and effect of opium and hashish. Later chapters analyze the influence on the works of various writers of the period, particularly Baudelaire.