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256 Reviews

The next two essays deftly introduce large and complex topics. Clare
Lees's 'At a Crossroads: Old English and Feminist Criticism' frankly
declares the ideological status of feminism as a politics, not just a
hermeneutic. Her review of scholarship to date and her practical analysis
of Elene provide a convincing critique of the intersection of gender and
genre in the Old English poetic tradition. Carol Braun Pasternack's 'Post-
Structuralist Theories: The Subject and the Text' ranges over Derrida,
Lacan, Barthes, Kristeva, Foucault and others before moving into a brief
post-structuralist reading of Beowulf that highlights the 'fissures and
slippages' which point to 'contradictions between an older oral-heroic
social formation and the written-Christian formation attempting its
conversion' (p. 185).
O n e must sympathise with Peter Baker, but also celebrate, that if
this book is to remain in print, as one hopes it will, his chapter on 'Old
English and Computing: A Guided Tour' will require frequent updating.
H e admirably outlines the history and 'present' (circa 1995) state of
humanities computing and Old English-related projects and bravely
looks to the future which so rapidly becomes the past in this field. The
challenge to humanities scholars is to design analytical and disseminatory
frames for scholarly material that are not overtaken and rendered obsolete
by hardware and software advances occurring before their completion.
Several good pedagogical books on Old English have appeared
recently, and Reading Old English Texts is as welcome as The Blackwell
Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, George Jack's Beowulf: A Student
Edition, Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson's Beowulf: An Edition, and some
others. In Reading Old English Texts, most obviously, some of the challenges
to the Old English teaching community laid d o w n by Allen Frantzen in
his Desire for Origins ( N e w Brunswick, 1991) are being answered.

Greg Waite
Department of English
University of Otago

6 hOgain, Daithi, The Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christi

Ireland, Woodbridge, T h e Boydell Press and Wilton, Cork, The
Collins Press, 1999; cloth; pp. viii, 259; R.R.P. £25.00, US$45.00.
Reviews 257

The beliefs of the pre-Christian Irish Celts have often been fancifully
'reconstructed', and the texts from which they are customarily derived
are universally acknowledged as problematic. This is because the
material w a s not committed to writing until after the conversion of the
Irish to Christianity in the fifth century C E . This book attempts to
combine archaeological evidence, Christian-influenced texts and
surviving folkloric customs to arrive at a cautious reconstruction of
the beliefs of the pre-Christian Irish. T h e archaeological remains of the
pre-Celtic inhabitants of Ireland is first considered, and the emphasis
is on the megaliths and passage-graves which feature in later Celtic
tales. 6 hOgain is careful not to speculate beyond the evidence and
discusses in general terms Neolithic and Bronze A g e cultural and social
shifts which affected technology and attitudes to death.
Chapter T w o , 'Basic Tenets in the Iron Age', reviews the evidence
for the arrival date of the Celts in Ireland and the earliest Greek texts
which provide information about Ireland and the Celtic peoples. This
involves discussion of archaeological hoards and the reconstructions
of Indo-European philologists concerning the relationship between the
'p' Celtic and 'q' Celtic language branches. T h e student of Celtic
mythology will here recognise s o m e of the motifs which are initially
introduced archaeologically, but contribute substantially to the later
tradition, for example the cult of the severed head (p. 49). At this point
a difficulty with The Sacred Isle becomes apparent. W h e n dealing with
the later textual material 6 hOgain does nothing strikingly original.
His six-page discussion of the severed head is a workmanlike s u m m a r y
of other materials, nothing more. Yet, as the book is not written as a
conventional introduction to the subject, it would not really be suitable
to recommend to junior students.
This impression deepens with the next chapter, "The Druids and
Their Practices'. This is a conventional coverage of the Classical
ethnographic texts (Julius Caesar, Strabo and others preserving sections
of the lost w o r k of Posidonius of A p a m e a ) followed by the accounts of
druids and their rituals and social functions from the medieval Irish
texts. There are occasional questionable statements, such as: 'the
literature indicates also that the druids were able practitioners of
psychiatry' (p. 87), which is justified by reference to the cure by druids
of Cuchullain's passion for Fand, a w o m a n of the Otherworld. The
258 Reviews

usual sources are cited for information about druidic rituals (Lucan,
Pliny) and the special role of female druids (Tacitus). The following
chapter, on druidic teachings, is better. T h e Classical insistence that
the druids taught a form of metempsychosis or transmigration of souls,
which is found in Strabo and Pomponius Mela, is neatly related to the
fluidity of identity and body found in later Irish tales such as Tochmarc
Etaine. There is considerable discussion of the Otherworld, which
connects with druidic lore particularly in terms of the pre-Christian
ritual calendar and the four major festivals in which druids presided
over ritual, and the boundaries between this world and the Otherworld
were dissolved.
6 hOgain m o v e s to a discussion of the role of the poets and of
speech and writing, and the relationship this bears to the Celtic concept
of 'knowledge'. This fifteen-page section (pp. 113-128) is genuinely
gripping, and s o m e important connections are established between
figures in literature such as wisdom-giving ancestors, solar deities and
shamanic style shape-shifters (all of w h o m are present in the
characterisation of the culture-hero Fionn MacCumhaill). Chapter Five,
"The Society of the Gods', considers the sacred sites of Ireland, chiefly
Tara and its connection to sacral kingship, and the w a y in which the
society of the gods replicates and reifies the society of humans. There
is a greater emphasis given to comparative Indo-European evidence
here. The material is again largely well-known, but drawn together
skilfully. The following chapter on kingship would have benefited from
comparative Indo-European material, being very narrowly Irish in
emphasis. The archaeological material on sites such as Tara and Navan
fort is interesting and well-integrated into w h a t has become an
increasingly text-determined argument.
The final section, T h e Triumph of Christianity, is a conventional
s u m m a r y of current research, acknowledging that there were Christians
in Ireland before Patrick, briefly mentioning Palladius, and analysing
the seventh-century hagiographies of the saint by Muirchu and
Tireachan. O hOgain is aware of the problems presented by these texts
but is principally concerned to explicate their meaning rather than
search for nuggets of historical fact (for example, what did it mean
w h e n Tireachan states that Patrick had resuscitated dead pagans in
order to baptise them?) The complex issues of to what extent Patrick
Reviews 259

and the other proponents of the n e w religion intended to integrate

Christianity into existing Irish culture, and h o w they gained ascendancy
over the druidic hierarchy, and what aspects of pagan belief Patrick
particularly combated are touched upon, but briefly. Important works
of scholarship b y Clare Stancliffe and Alannah Hopkin (The Living
Legend of Saint Patrick) are, a m o n g others, absent from the bibliography.
In conclusion, The Sacred Isle is a good general book in s o m e ways.
6 hOgain has an enthusiasm for the subject and writes extremely well,
which makes the book a pleasure to read. However, it does not add
anything to the current state of scholarship on pre-Christian Celtic
religion, and w o u l d therefore be of use primarily to an interested
amateur rather than a scholar or student.
Carole M . Cusack
Studies in Religion
University of Sydney

The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-

Kosinski, N e w York and London, Norton, 1997; paper, pp. xvi, 392;
R.R.P. US$14.75.

In this collection Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski seeks to bring togethe

a sample variety of Pizan's works and critical discussion in a format
suitable for classroom use. A collection of the m a n y works of Christine
de Pizan is long overdue. Despite the volume of recent English-language
critical studies of her works in the last twenty years or so, comparatively
few m o d e r n English editions have been produced. Although the
situation is somewhat better for French-language editions, Le livre de la
Cite des Dames, the proto-feminist text for which Pizan is probably best
known, w a s published for the first time in France as late as 1986. Beyond
the literary sphere, Pizan's works provide vital primary source material
about the lives and conditions of w o m e n of the late-fourteenth and
early fifteenth centuries which deserves to be reproduced for use
beyond a French-reading community alone.
Blumenfeld-Kosinki and Kevin Brownlee have translated all the
selected texts afresh, typically in a free flowing and easily accessible
style. The choice of vocabulary is essentially modern which, while some