The Medieval Imagination: ‘Mirabile Dictu’. Essays in Honour of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton ed. by Phyllis Gaffney and Jean-Michel Picard (review)

As befits a Festschrift, this volume begins with an overview of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton’s career and publications, their breadth attested by the wide range of topics and fields covered by colleagues and former students in order to recognize her contributions to the study of medieval vision literature and pay homage to her explorations, both personal and professional, connecting Celtic (particularly Irish) literature and culture with French and Anglo-Norman authors and subject matter. While acknowledging the overlap between History and Literature for a medieval public open to the marvels of creation but alive to ‘the comic potential of misplaced credulity’ (p. 13), the editors have arranged the twelve essays in a sequence that moves from literary topics emphasizing ‘the wonders and possibilities of language itself’ to ‘factual, or seemingly factual, approaches’ (p. 12) that offer descriptive, historical, and historiographical studies. Glyn Burgess’s masterly edition and translation of the Lai de l’Espervier is followed by chapters on a variety of Old French texts, by Joseph Long (reappraising Aude’s brief appearance), Phyllis Gaffney (on youthful automata in romance and epic), and Tony Hunt (showing how literary devices used in the Vie des Pères connect clerical and courtly rhetoric). The next three chapters move on to Celtic and Italian contexts: Richard Glyn Roberts and Jenny Rowland analyse scenes of banqueting that link Celtic and Old French versions; John C. Barnes explores how Dante uses the horse’s mythic and symbolic traditions; and Jennifer Petrie investigates Petrarch’s Daedalus and its mythic power. Passing beyond the realm of fiction, Kevin Murray examines three early Irish pseudo-historical prophetic texts to chart changes and varied usage, while Howard Clarke offers an evaluation of the pre- and post-conquest foundation legends constructed on behalf of Evesham Abbey. Guillebert de Mets’ account of a visit to fifteenth-century Paris invites Evelyn Mullally to discern where fact and fiction, past and present meet in the topography of a city remembered ‘in its flower’ (p. 157). The last two chapters pick up the theme of marvellous travel: Éamon Ó Ciosáin surveys ‘Le Merveilleux et l’espace européen: l’Irlande et les Irlandais dans la littérature médiévale française (xiie–xve siècles)’ in order to explain the rationale for presenting Ireland as pagan and Christian, civilized and uncivilized, at the edge of the European world; and Grace Neville, recalling de Pontfarcy Sexton’s outstanding work on Marie de France’s Espurgatoire de Seint Patriz, closes the volume with a series of travel reports to ‘le faubourg du purgatoire’ from medieval to modern times. Different readers will undoubtedly find favourites according to their interests and tastes (I particularly enjoyed entering the unfamiliar world of the Vie des Pères and exploring the urban terrain of Paris, not to mention the vagaries of human behaviour in the Espervier !). But all the essays in chorus, as well as the handsome book jacket, amply fulfil their purpose of illustrating and honouring the multiple accomplishments of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton. One small caveat: the layout of the footnotes in a block makes it hard to find individual numbers.