Listen, O Isles, unto Me: Studies in Medieval Word and Image in Honour of Jennifer O'Reilly. Edited by ELIZABETH MULLINS and DIARMUID SCULLY.

Abstract

This Festschrift in honour of Jennifer O’Reilly, FSA, MRIA, originated in a conference held in 2008 to mark her retirement from the Department of History at University College Cork, Ireland. O’Reilly is a specialist in the art and literature of the early medieval period, that of the British Isles in particular. In a university which did not teach theology, nor even its weak and confused child, religious studies, until relatively recently, O’Reilly inculcated a deep knowledge of and love for sacred Scripture in several generations of students as a necessary prerequisite for a proper understanding of medieval art and literature. The volume begins with an introduction wherein the editors summarize the contents of the book and provide a brief biography of O’Reilly herself. There then follow 25 essays in three sections. These essays are all pretty much equal in length, and closely reflect the honorand’s own interests so that there are clusters of essays on, for example, the writings of Bede, those of Adomnán of Iona, Anglo-Saxon sculpture, and the illumination of insular manuscripts. The result is a collection of essays rare in its cohesiveness. The contributors are split approximately equally between former students or colleagues of O’Reilly at Cork and international scholars from either Britain or the USA. The essays are all heavily annotated, but the notes appear together as endnotes rather than footnotes. There then follow a consolidated bibliography and a consolidated index. Curiously, the editors do not provide a separate list of the publications of the honorand herself as is normal in such volumes, but the consolidated bibliography preserves a long list of what presumably constitutes most of the same. The volume also includes 39 black-and-white photographs reproduced together in the traditional manner on high quality glossy paper at the centre of the book rather than dispersed throughout the book alongside the relevant sections of text as is increasingly common.