Reviews:

• ‘While chiefly important for providing the specialist with a reliable version of the VSO, it also gives a detailed commentary on the text: both of these will now be indispensable tools for the Berceo scholar. The English translation will usefully serve to make the Vida de Santa Oria accessible to scholars of other disciplines.’ — Gregory Peter Andrachuk, Modern Language Review 97.3, 2002, 743-5
• ‘The problems presented to a modern editor of Berceo’s Vida de Santa Oria are daunting. The text survives in a unique medieval copy [which] appears to have been made, at the most conservative estimate, more than a century after the death of its author... Lappin keeps Berceo’s text clean and readable by relegating textual notes to the end, and supports the text with over a hundred pages of informed and detailed critical commentary... There is much to be said for [Lappin’s] essentially pragmatic editorial approach. It honestly confronts the problem of a late or corrupt copy-text and does not assume, as has happened so often in the past, that an author who has become part of the canon is therefore free from literary sin and incapable of omission or logical inconsistency. Lappin’s Berceo emerges as an immaculate composer of verse but a vulnerable story-teller.’ — Ian Macpherson, Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXX, 2003, 112-13
• ‘Should become the standard reference for all future research on the Vida and, indeed, a touchstone for studying all of Berceo’s hagiographies.’ — E. Michael Gerli, Speculum 2003, 2003, 936-8
• ‘Un buon lavoro, che risolve sicuramente alcuni problemi editoriali e interpretavi.’ — Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie 120/2, 2004, 411-14
• ‘The publication of a full lenght study and edition of one of Berceo’s hagiographic works is a rare event; even rarer is the appearance of an English translation. But this book is not likely to be remembered for these reasons. More likely is that it will be read for what it is: a radical, but flawed, attempt to breathe new life into Oria scholarship.’ — Andrew M. Beresford, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Volume 80, n.1, January 2003, 119-20

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