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  • ‘Li premerains vers’: Essays in Honor of Keith Busby
  • Alex Stuart
‘Li premerains vers’: Essays in Honor of Keith Busby. Edited by Catherine M. Jones and Logan E. Whalen. (Faux titre, 361). Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011. xxx + 566 pp.

This Festschrift — largely in English, but with half a dozen pieces in French — comprises forty-four articles treating a vast array of themes predominantly, though not exclusively, in the field of medieval French literature. Reflecting Keith Busby’s own research interests, a number of the contributions deal with Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes, as well as the post-Chrétien Arthurian tradition. These are not, however, the sole focus of this wonderfully eclectic volume, which also contains work on all other major genres of medieval French literature (epic, hagiography, chronicle, fabliau, lyric poetry…) as well as a small selection of pieces treating medieval English, Dutch, and Italian literary texts. The volume moves still further afield at times, exploring legal texts, visual art, glossaries, and the afterlife of Arthurian material in the early modern period. Tying much of this diverse material together — and again echoing Busby’s own specialist concerns — is a keen interest in the manuscript (or, in one case, parchment roll) presentation of the texts and images in question. The collection also contains critical editions of two new texts. Tony Hunt provides an edition of the Anglo-Norman version of the Quadripertitus Hermetis, an astrological/magical treatise detailing the fifteen heavenly bodies, fifteen precious stones, fifteen virtuous herbs, and fifteen ‘ymages’ that ‘deivent estre tailez en pierres qant la Lune serra joint a lour esteilles qe a eux afieront’ (p. 189). Meanwhile, Philippe Ménard edits the Dit des Boulangers, a short thirteenth-century Parisian ode praising bakers and describing the various processes involved in the production of bread. Hunt’s edition provides a (very) brief introduction to the transmission history of the Quadripertitus and its predecessors; Ménard’s attaches a substantial collection of highly informative explanatory notes, a short overall commentary, and five black and white reproductions of medieval and early modern miniatures/engravings depicting the baking process. Given that the text dates from the thirteenth century, the inclusion of one fifteenth-, one sixteenth-, and three eighteenth- century illustrations — which do not receive their own introduction — seems a little arbitrary, but they do provide an interesting complement to the text. Other key highlights include an article by June Hall McCash on the chronology of Chrétien de Troyes’s work (which will shake many a critic’s faith in the little they thought was certain in the dating of the author’s romances) and Jane Taylor’s article on the process by which an Elizabethan playwright lost for inspiration chose to transform the Roman de Perceforest into a stage production of rather dubious quality. The chief merit of this book relies ultimately, however, not on specific pieces but on the sheer diversity of content found therein. A degree of unity is provided by the core themes of codicological context and the Arthurian tradition, but, with much else to offer, the volume may well suggest new and unexpected lines of enquiry for the researcher keen to get off the beaten track.

Alex Stuart
University of Cambridge
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