Keith Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, x, 516 pp.
“I have surveyed an enormous amount of material in the preceding pages” is Keith Busby’s comment on his book (p. 419). True enough. Seldom has an author treated Ireland’s early literature as ambitiously as he does, and Busby’s achievement is the more remarkable given the scantiness of the material. French literature surviving from medieval Ireland is (like literature in English) interesting but meagre. These texts of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries being few, the author fleshes out his material with writing on Ireland from Britain and the Continent, including legends of Arthur and of the Irish princess Iseult or Isolde. That at once makes French in Medieval Ireland essential for Romance scholars, as well as for medievalists concerned with the Irish.