Published November 2000

Berceo's 'Vida de Santa Oria': Text, Translation and Commentary
Anthony Lappin
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘While chiefly important for providing the specialist with a reliable version of the VSO, it also gives a detailed commentary on the text: both of these will now be indispensable tools for the Berceo scholar. The English translation will usefully serve to make the Vida de Santa Oria accessible to scholars of other disciplines.’ — Gregory Peter Andrachuk, Modern Language Review 97.3, 2002, 743-5 (full text online)
  • ‘The problems presented to a modern editor of Berceo's Vida de Santa Oria are daunting. The text survives in a unique medieval copy [which] appears to have been made, at the most conservative estimate, more than a century after the death of its author... Lappin keeps Berceo's text clean and readable by relegating textual notes to the end, and supports the text with over a hundred pages of informed and detailed critical commentary... There is much to be said for [Lappin's] essentially pragmatic editorial approach. It honestly confronts the problem of a late or corrupt copy-text and does not assume, as has happened so often in the past, that an author who has become part of the canon is therefore free from literary sin and incapable of omission or logical inconsistency. Lappin's Berceo emerges as an immaculate composer of verse but a vulnerable story-teller.’ — Ian Macpherson, Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXX, 2003, 112-13
  • ‘Should become the standard reference for all future research on the Vida and, indeed, a touchstone for studying all of Berceo's hagiographies.’ — E. Michael Gerli, Speculum 2003, 2003, 936-8
  • ‘Un buon lavoro, che risolve sicuramente alcuni problemi editoriali e interpretavi.’ — Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 120/2, 2004, 411-14
  • ‘The publication of a full lenght study and edition of one of Berceo's hagiographic works is a rare event; even rarer is the appearance of an English translation. But this book is not likely to be remembered for these reasons. More likely is that it will be read for what it is: a radical, but flawed, attempt to breathe new life into Oria scholarship.’ — Andrew M. Beresford, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Volume 80, n.1, January 2003, 119-20

Published January 2002

The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos
Anthony Lappin
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 56


Published May 2017

Saints and Monsters in Medieval French and Occitan Literature: Sublime and Abject Bodies
Huw Grange
Research Monographs in French Studies 53

  • ‘The author moves with an impressive lightness of touch across a huge range of versions of four saints’ lives — those of Margaret, George, Honorat, and Enimia — covering verse and prose, and Latin, French, and Occitan, in mostly unpublished manuscript versions... a considerable accomplishment.’ — Luke Sunderland, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 428-29
  • ‘This well-crafted book captures the goodwill of its audience from page one. Its author, Huw Grange, makes a simple inversion that rights a chronological wrong: saints are not the comic-book superheroes of the Middle Ages; rather today’s superheroes continue in the medieval saints’ tradition of extraordinary corporality... Saints and Monsters is what one would hope for a book of its kind insofar as its sophisticated engagement with theory is everywhere also an engagement with the literary object.’ — Brian J. Reilly, H-France 18.175, August 2018
  • ‘Grange’s final words affirm that the lives he’s described “want to live,” and in that want lies his book’s central thesis; but it is just possible that these saints are, thanks in part to Grange’s efforts at telling their stories, still living; and it is just possible that so are we.’ — Cary Howie, Speculum 95.1, January 2020, 249-50

Published July 2020

Hystoria Gweryddon yr Almaen: The Middle Welsh Life of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins
Edited by Jane Cartwright
MHRA Library of Medieval Welsh Literature

  • ‘This is a fine volume, nicely produced as part of the MHRA’s library of Medieval Welsh literature series. The introduction offers a full guide to the historical and philological context of the text, and succeeds in drawing out broader interest via its links to medieval Welsh historiography and hagiography and the wider European context. It will finally provide full-quality access to this interesting and multifaceted text, both for specialists in Welsh language and literature and for those interested in european hagiography of the period more generally.’ — David Willis, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 82, 2021, 91-93
  • ‘The Hystoria will undoubtedly appeal to scholars and students of Middle Welsh, and especially of Early Modern Welsh literature, as well as to academics interested in hagiography in general.’ — Luciana Cordo Russo, Studia Celtica 55, 2021, 189-91
  • ‘These volumes serve an important function in terms of bringing less familiar texts into a wider sphere of scholarly interest. While students of Middle Welsh will be able to work through the texts, producing their own translations with the help of notes and glossaries, scholars seeking access to these particular texts, along with a comparative perspective on medieval translation, Latinity, geography, and hagiography, will find these editions extremely valuable.’ — Helen Fulton, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 604-06 (full text online)