The medieval imagination: mirabile dictu

Essays in honour of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton

Phyllis Gaffney & Jean-Michel Picard, editors

Celebrating the life and works of Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton, this volume builds on her work to show how, in European medieval narratives, archetypes and beliefs can impart a deeper vibrancy to human experience, reconfiguring the everyday into something rich and strange. A newly edited text (Lay of the sparrowhawk) and eleven essays all focus on marvels of many kinds, ranging across imaginative literature and including even more imaginative forays into travel writing, ethnography and historiography, from the insular and continental Middle Ages.

For several generations of students of French at University College Dublin, Yolande de Pontfarcy Sexton was the living expression of French Courtly literature. An ambassador of French elegance and French culture, she brought to UCD her knowledge of medieval literature and her infectious enthusiasm and this book is a fitting tribute to an extraordinary scholar.

Contributors: Glyn S. Burgess (U Liverpool), Joseph B. Long (UCD), Phylllis Gaffney (UCD), Tony Hunt (U Oxford), Jenny Rowland (UCD), John C. Barnes (UCD), Jennifer Petrie (UCD), Kevin Murray (UCC), Howard B. Clarke (UCD), Evelyn Mullally (QUB), Éamonn Ó Ciosáin (NUIM), Grace Neville (UCC).

Phyllis Gaffney and Jean-Michel Picard are specialists in Medieval Studies and lecture in French and Old French at University College Dublin.