Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey (review)

This volume is a festschrift that grew out of an initiative to honour Tom Shippey on his sixtieth birthday. While the old custom of honouring a distinguished scholar at a career milestone with a volume of scholarly essays by colleagues and peers remains much in vogue, most published festschriften are probably at best somewhat ambivalent scholarly achievements. They tend to include articles varying widely in merit and scholarly rigour, united mainly by the editor's slightly desperate efforts to demonstrate that all have some relevance to the dedicatee's interests.

Such criticisms could not be levelled at this volume. The sixteen essays all deal, usually explicitly, with the effect of Jacob Grimm's scholarship on the development of nationalism and on the study of philology (broadly defined), folklore, and mythology in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Several contributors claim to have been guided or inspired by Shippey's own work on the 'Grimmian Revolution'.

The essays here do not present lightweight scholarship. Some are rather formidably learned, with pages in which a few lines of main text are followed by numerous and lengthy footnotes. Care has clearly been taken, however, to ensure that most contributions are readily accessible to the reader who is not expert in their subjects.

After Wawn's lively introduction providing some details of Shippey's career, the essays are presented in three sections – 'Nations and Nationalism' (containing essays by Hall, Arnold, Hill, Battarbee, and Nielsen). 'Philology and Philologists' (Gunnell, Fulk, Breeze, McTurk, Busby, Wawn, and Evans), and 'Myths and Mythology' (Orton, Lionarons, Battles, and Gay). A listing of Shippey's publications appears at the back of the book. It may be helpful here to consider the various vernaculars that are covered, though such a categorization is even less 'watertight' than the one employed by the editors.

Two essays deal with editing Beowulf. John Hill considers the philosophical underpinnings of nineteenth and early twentieth century editions and translations of the poem, while Robert D. Fulk, an editor of the recently published fourth edition of Klaeber's Beowulf, provides a detailed discussion of Klaeber's editorial practices, notably in regard to metrics.

At least four essays can be said to relate to Old Norse. Rory McTurk provides an edition of the 1833 translation of Krákumál by the Anglo-Irish poet Samuel Ferguson, and Andrew Wawn presents an entertaining account of the scholarly achievements of Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould (1834-1924), who ranged widely but did much work on folklore and Old Norse. The reader of Peter Orton's 'Spouting Poetry: Cognitive Metaphor and Conceptual Blending in the Old Norse Myth of the Poetic Mead' is warned to expect 'a certain burden of theory' (p. 279), and this discussion of metaphor is more specialised than many of the other essays. Joyce Tally Leonarons sticks largely to well-know Íslendingasögur in discussing women's work and magic in the sagas, focusing particularly on spinning and weaving.

The title of Terry Gunnell's essay is 'How Elfish were the Álfar?' but although Norse material is discussed extensively his concern is primarily with the nature of pagan Germanic religion. Martin Arnold's title mentions the Norse god Thor, but his subject is essentially Grimmian-inspired intellectual currents among scholars and literary figures in Germany and Denmark in the period 1751-1864. Also concerned with interactions is Keith Busby's 'A Bit of a Lad: J. B. B. Roquefort (1777-1834), based largely on the Francophone scholar's letters to Jacob Grimm and the latter's hostile reviews of Roquefort's work. (Roquefort's 'laddish' career is mentioned only in passing!) One other essay has a Scandinavian association: Hans Frede Nielsen brings linguistic artillery to bear on refuting the notion of a special link between English and the Jutish dialect.

Two...