Law and the imagination in medieval Wales by Robin Chapman Stacey (review)

Reviews 241 Russell, Paul. Forthcoming. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s classical and biblical inheritance. In A companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. Joshua Byron Smith & Georgia Henley, 67–103. Leiden: Brill. Wright, Neil (ed.). 1988. The Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth ii, The first variant version. A critical edition. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer. Robin Chapman Stacey, Law and the imagination in medieval Wales. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2018. ISBN 978-0-8122-5051-0. 335 pages. $89.95 (cloth). Charlene M. Eska Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University Following on her previous books, The road to judgment. From custom to court in medieval Ireland and Wales and Dark speech. The performance of law in early Ireland, Robin Chapman Stacey’s latest book, Law and the imagination in medieval Wales, is a thorough exploration of the benefits of taking a non-literal approach to the interpretation of the medieval Welsh legal corpus. The book is divided into three main sections, ‘Imagined landscapes’, ‘Body and bawdy’, and ‘Violence’, along with a separate introduction and conclusion. The reader is provided with copious notes, an up-to-date bibliography, and a detailed index. The author takes as her starting point the observation that some aspects of the medieval Welsh laws seem to challenge our modern notions of what law ‘ought’ to be, i.e., serious and open only to literal interpretation. By way of example, she relates the anecdote of explaining sanctuary to a medieval law class where an innocent student question regarding the physical limit of sanctuary a female baker could provide (the distance she could throw her scraper) and the ensuing class discussion brought to light the ridiculousness of the entire situation: ‘Would a person in trouble really seek out a kitchen servant for protection? What if she had hit someone with her scraper? And above all, why would something so incredibly silly be written into the law?’ (1). The remainder of the introduction familiarizes readers with the scholarship surrounding ‘law and literature’ and the history of that field, which, in part, sets the larger framework within which the author situates her book. This approach means that literary works, such as the Mabinogi, are referenced frequently throughout the book for the light that they shed on some aspects of the legal system (and vice-versa), thus demonstrating that law and literature are not as far apart as one might think and inviting us to take a more metaphorical interpretation of the law. The introduction also provides an overview of the main Welsh legal traditions and how each of these traditions relates to the others. For those not familiar with the material, the significance of the differences between the Charlene M. Eska [ceska@vt.edu] is a Professor in the Department of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University. She is the editor and translator of Cáin lánamna. An Old Irish tract on marriage and divorce law (Brill, 2010) and A raven’s battle-cry. The limits of judgment in the medieval Irish legal tract Anfuigell (Brill, 2018). Her research focuses upon early Irish law, manuscript studies, and philology. 242 North American journal of Celtic studies redactions can easily be lost. These differences are essential for comparative purposes. The author manages to achieve the difficult balance between providing enough detail for the specialist while keeping non-specialists from getting bogged down in the details. Although this section of the introduction is aimed at non-specialists, it is one of the clearest overviews of the Welsh legal corpus I have ever seen. The author concludes the introduction by suggesting that ‘. . . we must read laws in the same manner in which we read the tales: with close attention to setting, symbolism, narrative structure, and voice’ (25–26). The main body of the book provides examples, based on close reading of the laws, of exactly how one can set about doing this. Chapter 1, ‘Britain and Wales’, and chapter 2, ‘Court and country’, both explore the physical landscapes depicted in the law codes. The author contends that ‘. . . space and movements within designated landscapes matter much more than we have hitherto realized , and that both in fact function as thematic and structuring devices within the law...