[Review of] Mercedes Salvador-Bello, _Isidorean Perceptions of Order: the Exeter Book Riddles and Medieval Latin Enigmata_, West Virginia University Press, Morgantown, WV, 2015, 512 pp.

This article-review discusses of the first book-length investigation into the subtle yet fascinating correlation of Isidorean encyclopaedism and heuristic categories with early medieval riddle tradition. In particular, Salvador-Bello's monograph aims to contextualise the Exeter Book Riddles, the only pre-Conquest English vernacular collection, within the tradition of early medieval Latin riddling in the attempt to solve one of the crucial and yet largely overlooked puzzles posed by this collection, i.e. the compilation process and organizational patterns of its thematic sections. The chief claim of Isidorean Perceptions of Order is that, lying beneath the rather conspicuous idiosyncrasies of the Exeter Book riddle collection, an order is indeed detectable and it is one of a distinctively Isidorean brand, in that the Exeter Riddles fundamentally adhere to the thematic and structural criteria established by the major late antique and early medieval Latin riddle collections and ultimately derived from the encyclopaedic tradition, in general, and from the most influential encyclopaedia of all, Isidore’s Etymologiae, in particular.