Catherine E. Leglu. Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State UP, 2010. Pp. 216. Moving easily among different languages and genres, Prof. C. Leglu, leading representative of medieval French and Occitan studies in United Kingdom, examines literary use of competing Romance vernaculars that took place between twelfth and fifteenth centuries, in porous borderland between French, Occitan, and Catalan (13). The book is structured in three parts, each with three chapters. Nineteen texts of Occitan, Catalan, and French traditions are examined closely and extensively, one or more in each chapter. As acknowledged by author, chapter 1 and parts of chapters 3 and 5 have already been published. However, they are here integrated into single and thus more cogent book. The wide range of works (originally written in no less than five different languages) has led author to supply reader with useful synopses and English translations. Most importantly, Leglu proposes new interpretation of notions of multilingualism and mother tongue in light of an engaging interpretation of three linguistic myths: Tower of Babel, evangelical Pentecost, and story of Soloi. The introduction opens with commentary on manuscript of Peyre de Paternas's Libre de sufficientia et necessitat (Paris, BNF, fr. 3313A). Copied by Breton scribe, this treatise (c. 1350) stands as clear example of multilingual communication only possible in papal court in Avignon (1309-1376). Within Libre, Latin text alternates with translation en nostra linga maternal (in our mother tongue), i.e., Occitan language that Peyre de Paternas and his noble Limousin dedicatee, Delphine de Belfort, shared. In Part I, The Myths of Multilingualism, four Occitan texts are studied. First, focus is on peculiar twelfth-century epic, Girart de Roussillon. This text has been passed down in different versions, each showing specific linguistic variety. In this framework, Leglu focuses on political and sacred values of languages, examining their roles in pursuit of conflict or promulgation of peace. Girart is read in light of inherent conflict between post-Babelian confusion of languages and reconciling message of Pentecost (26). In Arnaut Vidal's Guilhem de la Barra (chapter 2), an Occitan roman written in 1318, tongues of fire of Pentecost play an ambivalent role. On one hand, they are imbued with power of overriding post-Babelian linguistic confusion, but on other, they are associated with terrible form of torture that, over course of fourteenth century, Toulouse inquisition inflicted upon those found guilty of false accusation. In third chapter, Leglu discusses two Occitan fourteenth-century texts. First, translation of Paolino Veneto's Compendium or Chronica magna, a universal history constructed on visual model as an illustrated series of tabulated genealogies and lines of succession (56), written within the multilingual and highly hierarchized papal court of Avignon. Secondly, Leys d'Amor, major grammatical and rhetorical treatise, prose version of which survives in two drafts attributed to Guilhem Molinier. Moreover, verse redaction of Leys, Flors del Gay Saber, is preserved in Catalan manuscript. In context in which Occitan was losing its prestige, milieux in Avignon and Toulouse responded with two separate strategies: first, in Avignon, by stressing language acquisition as way of freeing people from endogamous tyranny of (m)other tongue, and, secondly, in Toulouse, by conceiving difficult, morally dubious but conciliatory view of language multiplicity. Examples of Translation scandals are considered in chapter 4, first of Part II, Language Politics. …