La Vie seint Edmund le rei by Denis Piramus (review)

From the early twelfth century, the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds was instrumental in the establishing of a textual tradition around its patron saint, and it is in this context that towards the end of the twelfth century Denis Piramus wrote his life of St Edmund. His work was notable for being the first extended treatment and consolidation of the legend in French. D. W. Russell’s new edition makes excellent use of Ian Short’s and William Rothwell’s work in the field to present the text in a long-awaited new light (see Short, ‘Denis Piramus and the Truth of Marie’s Lais ’, Cultura neolatina, 67 (2007), 319–40, and Rothwell, ‘The Life and Miracles of St Edmund: A Recently Discovered Manuscript’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library, 60 (1977–78), 135–80): it was previously edited by Hilding Kjellman in 1935 (La Vie seint Edmund le rei, poème anglo-normand du xii^e siècle (Gothenburg: no pub.)). In Rothwell’s article the then recently discovered Rylands manuscript of the text (French MS 142) was already compared favourably against London, British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A XI (the only other manuscript copy of the text, which formed the basis of Kjellman’s edition), and was shown to preserve a more original, albeit slightly incomplete version of the text. Russell’s edition rightfully reverts to the Rylands manuscript as its base text, thus aiming finally to present a modern audience with a more authentic version of the life. The sixty-four page Introduction, as we have come to expect from the Anglo-Norman Text Society series, offers a wide-ranging discussion of the text, with scholarly (re-)examinations of authorship (expanding upon Short’s work on the association of the author with a magister Dionisius), date, Latin as well as non-textual sources (though without considering the possible influence of Ælfric’s late tenth-century English translation of Abbo of Fleury’s Passio), and audiences (pointing out the appeal and political significance of this text to the baronial classes). Close attention is given to the language, with particularly thorough analysis of Piramus’s relatively uncommon lexis useful for incorporation into the Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Of special note is Kathryn A. Smith’s twenty-four page art-historical excursus on the forty-two illustrations to the text in the Rylands manuscript. As well as giving detailed descriptions of the drawings (complementary to the online images of the entire manuscript available on the website of the John Rylands Library, though no longer at the address provided in the edition (p. 18, n. 46), but at <http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet> [accessed 19 January 2016]), she also interprets how these fourteenth-century illustrations expand upon or transform the twelfth-century text. The main text itself is presented with minimal editorial interventions, although octosyllabic metre and grammatical concord are restored whenever such a change is believed to be straightforward (and sometimes corroborated by the London manuscript). Original manuscript readings are given at the bottom of the page, while selected variant readings (excluding purely orthographical variants) follow as a separate section. Ample editorial notes together with an extensive glossary and index of personal names add to the enjoyment of reading an already very entertaining text.. Of special note is Kathryn A. Smith’s twenty-four page art-historical excursus on the forty-two illustrations to the text in the Rylands manuscript. As well as giving detailed descriptions of the drawings (complementary to the online images of the entire manuscript available on the website of the John Rylands Library, though no longer at the address provided in the edition (p. 18, n. 46), but at <http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet> [accessed 19 January 2016]), she also interprets how these fourteenth-century illustrations expand upon or transform the twelfth-century text. The main text itself is presented with minimal editorial interventions, although octosyllabic metre and...