Bibliography
Lindsey Zachary
Panxhi
Contributions to journals
Panxhi, Lindsey Zachary, “Rewriting the werewolf and rehabilitating the Irish in the Topographia Hibernica of Gerald of Wales”, Viator 46:3 (2015): 21–40.
abstract:
In his twelfth-century travel narrative, the Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland), Gerald of Wales writes of an encounter between a priest and a pair of Irish werewolves, who ask the priest to administer the viaticum to the sickly she-wolf before her death. Observing the werewolves’ devout words and sincere demeanor, the priest complies, but his actions are later questioned in a synod. Postcolonial scholarship interprets Gerald’s account as a pro-Norman depiction of the Irish as barbarians, which is a tenable reading in the first recension of the text. However, such an interpretation is complicated by passages Gerald adds in four subsequent recensions. This article offers a corrective reading by examining the content of Gerald’s later recensions that has been repeatedly overlooked, and by suggesting that the episode is most significantly shaped by Gerald’s identity as a clerical reformer, rather than as a court writer seeking to debase the Irish.
abstract:
In his twelfth-century travel narrative, the Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland), Gerald of Wales writes of an encounter between a priest and a pair of Irish werewolves, who ask the priest to administer the viaticum to the sickly she-wolf before her death. Observing the werewolves’ devout words and sincere demeanor, the priest complies, but his actions are later questioned in a synod. Postcolonial scholarship interprets Gerald’s account as a pro-Norman depiction of the Irish as barbarians, which is a tenable reading in the first recension of the text. However, such an interpretation is complicated by passages Gerald adds in four subsequent recensions. This article offers a corrective reading by examining the content of Gerald’s later recensions that has been repeatedly overlooked, and by suggesting that the episode is most significantly shaped by Gerald’s identity as a clerical reformer, rather than as a court writer seeking to debase the Irish.
