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Andrea Grafetstätter, Sieglinde Hartmann & James Ogier (eds.) (2011) Islands and Cities in Medieval Myth, Literature and History. Papers delivered at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, in 2005, 2006 and 2007, New York, Peter Lang, 190pp. ISBN: 978-3-6316-1165-4. US$58.95.
The collection of essays in Islands and Cities in Medieval Myth, Literature, and History arose out of seven sessions at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds in 2004-2007. Four sessions were on the topic of islands and three on cities. The result is a two-part collection of eleven essays of a literary and historical nature on medieval islands, cities, and other phenomena from such places as Germany, Iceland, Japan, Mexico, Paris, Poland and Prussia. Quality-wise, it is a mixed bag. The Editors' Preface notes some similarities between the ways islands and cities were represented in the literary and historical sources of the Middle Ages; but, for our purposes, we will concentrate on the essays that deal with insular spaces.
At their best, the essays that focus on islands offer new perspectives on familiar texts because of attention to the insular in them. One of two essays by the editor James Ogier, "Islands and Skylands: An Eddic Geography," notes that the only two islands mentioned in the Icelandic Edda, the Völundarkviöa, are astral islands...