Victoria Flood, Fantastic Histories: Medieval Fairy Narratives and the Limits of Wonder. Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2024, xiii, 288 pp.

The medieval world was deeply influenced by the appearance of wonders, whether mythical creatures or fairies, and many authors engaged with them, often transgressing the traditional boundaries between history and fiction. This forces us to reflect today deeply on what constitutes factual history, when it is really mostly the result of collective discourses and agreed upon narratives. In her new study (a previous monograph dealt with Prophecy, Politics, and Place in Medieval England, 2016), Victoria Flood focuses on the long tradition of fairies as they were mentioned already by Augustine and were later more fully developed by famous authors Walter Map, Gervasius of Tilbury, and Gerald of Wales. Their works seem to have influenced ca. two hundred years later the writings of Jean d’Arras (1393) and Couldrette (ca. 1400) about the fairy Mélusine. This hybrid woman gained much popularity in the late Middle Ages (Thüring von Ringoltingen, 1456; here mentioned only once in passing), and the very common furniture in early modern castles, the “Lüsterweibchen,” demonstrates the intriguing transition from fiction to material reality (see my study Water in Medieval Literature, 2018, here not consulted).