Jill Mann : From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 380. Cloth £ 60.00.

• Derek Pearsall

This is the book that medieval scholars have been hoping for. Jill Mann published her edition of the difficult Latin beast epic Ysengrimus in 1987 and made herself an expert in the subject; the Introduction here is a massively annotated survey of and further contribution to the scholarship of pan-European Latin beast-literature. In seven succeeding chapters Mann displays an equal command of a range of British beast literature in three languages (four, including Scots) and every genre: animal fable (Marie de France), beast epic (the Speculum Stultorum), animal debate (the Owl and the Nightingale), and a variety of descended forms, ending with the union of fable and beast epic in Henryson’s Fables. The command of context gives unique authority to Mann’s account, and unique insight into what is new in each successive manifestation of the genre.

Seiten 409 - 410