Centre for Neo-Latin Studies

News: Zoilomastix Launch

(9/3/2009)

Denis O'Sullivan's edition of Philip O'Sullivan Beare's Zoilomastix (book one: The Natural History of Ireland) will be launched by Cork University Press on 21 May 2009.

The Zoilomastix is a lengthy treatise written in refutation of the account of Ireland given by the medieval author Gerald of Wales in his Topography of Ireland and Conquest of Ireland. O'Sullivan also attacks the writings of Richard Stanihurst, whom he sees as a modern-day Gerald of Wales.

Book one of the Zoilomastix is devoted to re-writing the natural history of Ireland. Although the author had spent most of his life abroad, he was able to draw upon his classical learning and compare his findings with the memories of Irish friends in the exile community in Spain and Portugal. The resulting text is a complex but extensive set of notes on Ireland's landscape, flora and fauna.

Denis O'Sullivan's edition and translation of the text is an enormous achievement in rendering an extremely difficult manuscript accessible to a wider public.