Covert Operations brings the categories and cultural meanings of secrecy in the Middle Ages out into the open. Isolating five broad areas-confession, women's gossip, medieval science and medicine, marriage and the law, and sodomitic discourse-Lochrie examines various types of secrecy and the literary texts in which they are played out.

Karma Lochrie is Ruth Halls Professor of English at Indiana University. She is the author of Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.