Change of date of Christmas Dinner and an Interesting Lecture

Just to give you a Heads Up that the date of our Christmas Party has been changed to Thursday 14th December (it was previously the following day) and we hope that it suits more of you to have it on the Thursday night.

The other event may be of interest to you as a Francophile. Kilkenny Archaeological Society is delighted to confirm that Professor Keith Busby of University of Wisconsin- Madison will deliver his much talked about address to the society on

 

Wednesday 29th November at 8.00pm in Roth House

From the Conspiracy of Mellifont to the Kyteler Trial:

Two Centuries of French in Medieval Ireland”.

 

The talk will consider the use of French as a language of interpersonal communication, literature, and monumental inscriptions in multilingual Ireland from the foundation of Mellifont (1142) until the mid-fourteenth century, ending with a brief consideration of the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366). It will stress the role of Kilkenny in Francophone culture of the period.


Dr. Keith Busby is Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds degrees in French and Mediaeval Studies from Magdalen College, Oxford and the University of York. His publications include Gauvain in Old French Literature (1980), a translation of the Lais of Marie de France (with Glyn Burgess, 1986), an edition of the Perceval of Chretien de Troyes (1993), Codex and Context (2002), and French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French (2017).

 

He is currently editing the French language works of Jofroi de Waterford (c. 1300), and is contemplating a new edition of The Statutes of Kilkenny.

 

The event is open to members (of Kilkenny Archaeological Society) and non-members alike and is sure to be of more than usual interest to those mindful of Kilkenny’s early status and society.