In this talk, Keith Busby (University of Wisconsin-Madison) examines the use of French both before and after the arrival of the first colonists in 1169. He sheds new light on the corpus of medieval French texts composed in Ireland, including an important new discovery concerning the work of Jofroi de Waterford. After considering the persistent image of Ireland as a land of marvels in French literature composed outside of Ire-land, he returns to the question of multilingualism and concludes by looking at the use of French as a memorial language on medieval gravestones in southeastern Ire-land. The talk is richly illustrated.

Free and Open to the Public