- Department of English, University of Toronto
170 St George Street
Toronto Ontario M5R 2M8
Canada
Sebastian Sobecki
University of Toronto, English, Department Member
- Literary History, Medieval English Literature, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Culture, Maritime History, Travel Writing, and 77 moreLate Medieval English History, History of the Book, Early Modern History, Tudor England, Central European history, History of the Common Law, Middle English, Chaucer, Early Modern Literature, Early Modern Europe, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Lydgate, John Gower, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Codicology, Book History, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, Piers Plowman, Langland, Gower, Pearl Poet, Marie De France, Medieval Romance, Medieval History, History, Literature, British History, English Literature, English, Humanities, Digital Humanities, Travel Literature, Religion, Historiography, Law and Literature, Islands, Insularity, Law of the Sea, Seafarers, Naval History, Trade Routes, Law and Humanities, Reformation Studies, English Reformation, Reformation History, Ecocriticism, Medieval Law, Medieval Literature, Arthurian Studies, Early Modern England, Renaissance literature, History of Scholarship, Philology, Latin Literature, Medieval Latin Literature, Medieval Europe, Comparative Literature, Literary Criticism, Literary Theory, Medieval Literary theory, Medieval vernacular translations (volgarizzamenti), Social History, Cultural History, Intellectual and cultural history, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Rare Books And Manuscripts (Library Science), Textual Criticism, Middle English literature and culture, Medievalism, John Lydgate, Middle English Literature, Palaeography, Medieval Women, and Medieval Historiographyedit
- See: https://www.english.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/sebastian-sobeckiedit
No medieval text was designed to be read hundreds of years later by an audience unfamiliar with its language, situation, and author. By ascribing to these texts intentional anonymity, we romanticise them and misjudge the social character... more
No medieval text was designed to be read hundreds of years later by an audience unfamiliar with its language, situation, and author. By ascribing to these texts intentional anonymity, we romanticise them and misjudge the social character of their authors. Instead, most medieval poems and manuscripts presuppose familiarity with their authorial or scribal maker. Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England attempts to recover this familiarity and understand the literary motivation behind some of the most important fifteenth-century texts and authors.
Last Words captures the public selves of such social authors when they attempt to extract themselves from the context of a lived life. Driven by archival research and literary inquiry, this book will reveal where John Gower kept the Trentham manuscript in his final years, how John Lydgate wished to be remembered, and why Thomas Hoccleve wrote his best-known work, the Series. This book will include documentary breakthroughs and archival discoveries, and will introduce a new life record for Hoccleve, identify the author of a significant political poem, and reveal the handwriting of John Gower and George Ashby.
Through its investments in archival study, book history, and literary criticism, Last Words charts the extent to which medieval English literature was shaped by the social selves of their authors.
Last Words captures the public selves of such social authors when they attempt to extract themselves from the context of a lived life. Driven by archival research and literary inquiry, this book will reveal where John Gower kept the Trentham manuscript in his final years, how John Lydgate wished to be remembered, and why Thomas Hoccleve wrote his best-known work, the Series. This book will include documentary breakthroughs and archival discoveries, and will introduce a new life record for Hoccleve, identify the author of a significant political poem, and reveal the handwriting of John Gower and George Ashby.
Through its investments in archival study, book history, and literary criticism, Last Words charts the extent to which medieval English literature was shaped by the social selves of their authors.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Self and Identity, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreMiddle English, Literature, Literary Criticism, Medieval English Literature, Manuscript Studies, Literary Theory, The Self, Medieval England, Authorship, Palaeography, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, John Gower, Theories of Authorship, and George Ashby
This book argues that medieval ideas of translation, a Lancastrian legacy of conciliar government, and an adherence to unwritten tradition created a vernacular legal culture that challenged the textual practices of Erasmian Humanism and... more
This book argues that medieval ideas of translation, a Lancastrian legacy of conciliar government, and an adherence to unwritten tradition created a vernacular legal culture that challenged the textual practices of Erasmian Humanism and the early Reformation. The proliferation of vernacular law books, I maintain, contributed to the popular rebellions of 1549, at the helm of which often stood petitioners trained in paralegal writing.
Details: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03163#description
Details: http://undpress.nd.edu/books/P03163#description
Research Interests: Christianity, History, Cultural History, Law, Canon Law, and 72 moreConstitutional Law, English Literature, History of Ideas, Legal Education, Translation Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Christian Education, Early Modern History, Multilingualism, Book History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Humanism, Renaissance, Legal History, Medieval English Literature, Translation theory, Reformation History, Reformation Studies, English Reformation, Tudor England, Legal Theory, English, William Tyndale, Oral Traditions, Tudor History, Early Modern Literature, History of Political Thought, Customary Law, Medieval England, Early Modern Intellectual History, European Legal History, Humanism, Printing History, Renaissance literature, Constitutional Theory, English law, Thomas Hoccleve, Vernacular, Multilingual Education, Humanismo, Reformation, Church of England, John Gower, Inns of Court, Anglo-Norman ("Law French"), Common Law, Vernacularity, Legal translation studies, Common Law, Civil Law, law and government, William Caxton, Sir Thomas More, Piers Plowman, John Rastell, Interpretation of Statutes, Erasmian humanism, Legal History, constitutional history, law and society, History of Books, Printing, and Publishing, Interpretation of law or statutes, Lancastrian Political History, Medieval Statutory Law, William Blackstone, Caxton, Common Law In French, Tudor Rebellions, Constitutional Law Theory, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, John Fortescue, and Christopher St German
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and... more
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. Whether it is Britain's privileged place in the geography of salvation or the political fiction of the idyllic island fortress, medieval English writers' myths of the sea betray their anxieties about their own insular identity; their texts call on maritime motifs to define England geographically and culturally against the presence of the sea. New insights from a range of fields, including jurisprudence, theology, the history of cartography and anthropology, are used to provide fresh readings of a wide range of both insular and continental writings.
Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=11797
Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=11797
Research Interests: Christianity, History, French Literature, Classics, Latin Literature, and 68 moreEnglish Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, Medieval French Literature, Middle English, Women's writing, Literature, Medieval Studies, Island Studies, Shakespeare, Maritime History, Pilgrimage, Maritime Law, Women's Literature, Old Testament, Law of the Sea, National Identity, Gower, Early Middle English: 12th-13th Centuries, Ecocriticism, Literature of the Sea, Travel Literature, Monasticism, Margery Kempe, Old French, Anglo-Norman literature and culture, Middle English literature and culture, Empire, Medieval Romance, Medieval Geography, The Tristan legend, Ecocriticism, travel writing, popular literature and culture, Maritime, Medieval Chronicles, Middle English Romances, Englishness, Whales, English language, Englishness, British social and cultural history, Book of Jonah, Medieval Maps, John Gower, Gawain-poet, Classical Literature, Gildas, Henry of Huntingdon, Maritime Studies, Patience, Leviathan, The Tempest, Islands, Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, Libel of English Policy, Apollonius of Tyre, King horn, St Brendan, Sea in literature, Romance of Horn, Matthew Paris, Connectivity, Navigate Sancti Brendani Abbatis, Insularity, Medieval Mappae Mundi, Territorial Water Claim, Ecocritical Theory, Matthew Paris (Chronicler), and Navigatio sancti Brendani
The critical edition of The Principal Navigations is under contract with Oxford University Press in 14 volumes. It will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers and teachers working on early modern travel, trade and colonialism.... more
The critical edition of The Principal Navigations is under contract with Oxford University Press in 14 volumes. It will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers and teachers working on early modern travel, trade and colonialism. The individual volumes will cover:
Vol 1. Medieval Voyages
Vol 2. Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy
Vol 3. Muscovy and Persian Travel
Vol 4. Russia, Iceland and Anglo-Spanish Relations
Vol 5. Medieval Travel and the Early Levant Trade
Vol 6. Levant Travels, South Asia, and Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy
Vol 7. Travels to Africa and the Far East, and the Anglo-Spanish War
Vol 8. Maritime War with Spain, the Northwest Passage, and West Africa
Vol 9. The Northwest Passage, Travels to Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence
Vol 10. Voyages to New France, Roanoke, and Florida
Vol 11. Voyages to New Mexico, California, and New Spain
Vol 12. West Indies Voyages
Vol 13. Travels to Guiana, Brazil, and the River Plate
Vol 14. The South Seas, Far East, and Spanish Trade and Navigation
Vol 1. Medieval Voyages
Vol 2. Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy
Vol 3. Muscovy and Persian Travel
Vol 4. Russia, Iceland and Anglo-Spanish Relations
Vol 5. Medieval Travel and the Early Levant Trade
Vol 6. Levant Travels, South Asia, and Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy
Vol 7. Travels to Africa and the Far East, and the Anglo-Spanish War
Vol 8. Maritime War with Spain, the Northwest Passage, and West Africa
Vol 9. The Northwest Passage, Travels to Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence
Vol 10. Voyages to New France, Roanoke, and Florida
Vol 11. Voyages to New Mexico, California, and New Spain
Vol 12. West Indies Voyages
Vol 13. Travels to Guiana, Brazil, and the River Plate
Vol 14. The South Seas, Far East, and Spanish Trade and Navigation
Research Interests: History, European History, Geography, Asian Studies, European Studies, and 57 moreLatin Literature, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval History, Early Modern History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Old English Literature, Arthurian Studies, English History, Mongolian Studies, English, History of English Literature, Early Modern Literature, History of the Mongol Empire, Bede, Medieval France, Renaissance literature, Travel Literature, English Renaissance Literature, Elizabethan Literature, France, The Hundred Years War, Medieval Isle of Man, Tacitus, King John, Holy Roman Empire, Frederick I Barbarossa, Norway, Teutonic Knights, John Dee, Medieval Norway, Isle of Man, king Arthur, King Edgar, Hanseatic League, Elizabethan England, Elizabethan and Jacobean England and Europe, Bede the Venerable, Edward III, Cologne, Bristol, History of the Isle of Man, History of France, William of Rubruck, Lübeck, Cologne at the Middle Ages, Charters, Voyages and Travels, Richard Hakluyt, Cinque Ports, John of Plano Carpini, Lubeck History, Medieval charters, Cinque Ports history, and nicholas of lynn
The critical edition of The Principal Navigations is under contract with Oxford University Press in 14 volumes. It will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers and teachers working on early modern travel, trade and colonialism.... more
The critical edition of The Principal Navigations is under contract with Oxford University Press in 14 volumes. It will provide an unparalleled resource for researchers and teachers working on early modern travel, trade and colonialism. The individual volumes will cover:
Vol 1. Medieval Voyages
Vol 2. Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy
Vol 3. Muscovy and Persian Travel
Vol 4. Russia, Iceland and Anglo-Spanish Relations
Vol 5. Medieval Travel and the Early Levant Trade
Vol 6. Levant Travels, South Asia, and Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy
Vol 7. Travels to Africa and the Far East, and the Anglo-Spanish War
Vol 8. Maritime War with Spain, the Northwest Passage, and West Africa
Vol 9. The Northwest Passage, Travels to Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence
Vol 10. Voyages to New France, Roanoke, and Florida
Vol 11. Voyages to New Mexico, California, and New Spain
Vol 12. West Indies Voyages
Vol 13. Travels to Guiana, Brazil, and the River Plate
Vol 14. The South Seas, Far East, and Spanish Trade and Navigation
Vol 1. Medieval Voyages
Vol 2. Medieval Voyages and the English in Muscovy
Vol 3. Muscovy and Persian Travel
Vol 4. Russia, Iceland and Anglo-Spanish Relations
Vol 5. Medieval Travel and the Early Levant Trade
Vol 6. Levant Travels, South Asia, and Anglo-Ottoman Diplomacy
Vol 7. Travels to Africa and the Far East, and the Anglo-Spanish War
Vol 8. Maritime War with Spain, the Northwest Passage, and West Africa
Vol 9. The Northwest Passage, Travels to Newfoundland, and the Gulf of St Lawrence
Vol 10. Voyages to New France, Roanoke, and Florida
Vol 11. Voyages to New Mexico, California, and New Spain
Vol 12. West Indies Voyages
Vol 13. Travels to Guiana, Brazil, and the River Plate
Vol 14. The South Seas, Far East, and Spanish Trade and Navigation
Research Interests: History, Economic History, German Studies, Russian Studies, English Literature, and 40 moreMedieval History, Early Modern History, German History, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, English History, English, Medieval Church History, Diplomacy, Russian History, History of Prussia, History of Diplomacy, Medieval Germany, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, Norway, Denmark, early modern Russia (Muscovy), Teutonic Knights, Medieval Denmark, Middle Ages, Prussian History, Medieval Norway, Calais, history of Poland, Medieval Diplomacy, Medieval Poland, Muscovy Company, Hanseatic League, Teutonic Order, Anglo-Russian relations, Henry IV, East Prussia, History of Muscovy, Edward II, Ships, Russian History, Anglo-Russian Relations, Charters, History of Poland-Lithuania, and Medieval charters
OPEN ACCESS. This is the first edition of A Mirroure of Myserie (1557), a poem by the Catholic propagandist Miles Hogarde and probably presented to Queen Mary. Cast as a dream vision, this combative dialogue draws on William Langland’s... more
OPEN ACCESS. This is the first edition of A Mirroure of Myserie (1557), a poem by the Catholic propagandist Miles Hogarde and probably presented to Queen Mary. Cast as a dream vision, this combative dialogue draws on William Langland’s widely circulating medieval poem The Vision of Piers Plowman and offers a critical assessment of sixteenth-century morality in England.
The Mirroure of Myserie has been edited from Huntington Library MS 121 and is accompanied by a short introduction. This accessible edition preserves Hogarde’s original spelling but adds modern punctuation and glosses of all unfamiliar words and concepts.
The Mirroure of Myserie has been edited from Huntington Library MS 121 and is accompanied by a short introduction. This accessible edition preserves Hogarde’s original spelling but adds modern punctuation and glosses of all unfamiliar words and concepts.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, English Literature, Theology, and 15 moreEarly Modern History, Renaissance Studies, Reformation Studies, Tudor England, English, Early Modern England, Tudor History, Catholic Theology, Early Modern Literature, Visions And Dreams, Tudor Literature, William Langland, Piers Plowman, Mary Tudor, and Mary I
Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology is a comprehensive textbook that consists of three sections: concise introductory essays written by leading specialists; an anthology of important and less well-known texts, grouped by... more
Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology is a comprehensive textbook that consists of three sections: concise introductory essays written by leading specialists; an anthology of important and less well-known texts, grouped by destination; and a selection of supporting bibliographies organised by type of voyage. This anthology presents some texts for the first time in a modern edition. The first section consists of six
companion essays on ‘Places, Real and Imagined’, ‘Maps the Organsiation of Space’, ‘Encounters’, ‘Languages and Codes’, ‘Trade and Exchange’, and ‘Politics and Diplomacy’.
The organising principle for the anthology is one of expansive geography. Starting with local English narratives, the section moves to France, en-route destinations, the Holy Land, and the Far East. In total, the anthology contains 26 texts or extracts, including new editions of Floris & Blancheflour, The Stacions of Rome, The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, and Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, in addition to less familiar texts, such as Osbern Bokenham’s Mappula Angliae, John Kay’s Siege of Rhodes 1480, and Richard Torkington’s Diaries of Englysshe Travell.
The supporting bibliographies, in turn, take a functional approach to travel, and support the texts anthologised here by elucidating contexts for travel and travellers in five areas: ‘commercial voyages’, ‘diplomatic and military travel’, ‘maps, rutters, and charts’, ‘practical needs’, and ‘religious voyages’.
companion essays on ‘Places, Real and Imagined’, ‘Maps the Organsiation of Space’, ‘Encounters’, ‘Languages and Codes’, ‘Trade and Exchange’, and ‘Politics and Diplomacy’.
The organising principle for the anthology is one of expansive geography. Starting with local English narratives, the section moves to France, en-route destinations, the Holy Land, and the Far East. In total, the anthology contains 26 texts or extracts, including new editions of Floris & Blancheflour, The Stacions of Rome, The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, and Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, in addition to less familiar texts, such as Osbern Bokenham’s Mappula Angliae, John Kay’s Siege of Rhodes 1480, and Richard Torkington’s Diaries of Englysshe Travell.
The supporting bibliographies, in turn, take a functional approach to travel, and support the texts anthologised here by elucidating contexts for travel and travellers in five areas: ‘commercial voyages’, ‘diplomatic and military travel’, ‘maps, rutters, and charts’, ‘practical needs’, and ‘religious voyages’.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, European History, Economic History, and 15 moreEuropean Studies, Latin Literature, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Crusades, Pilgrimage, Palestine, Travel Literature, Margery Kempe, and Middle East
Global Medieval Travel Writing: A Literary History addresses the need for an authoritative literary history of medieval travel accounts and geographical reports from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the Reformation. This will be the... more
Global Medieval Travel Writing: A Literary History addresses the need for an authoritative literary history of medieval travel accounts and geographical reports from the beginning of the Middle Ages to the Reformation. This will be the first pan-European, Middle Eastern, and global guide through the bewildering maze of medieval travel narratives. The History will also strive for comprehensiveness: its 40+ chapters will cover texts from the entire Continent and from the Middle East, including a majority of European and Middle Eastern writing traditions and literary languages. Each chapter will be written by a leading specialist in his or her geographical area. At the same time, the geographical scope of this collection, with chapters on travel writing produced by Persian, Arabic, and Chinese writers, will challenge the term ‘(late) medieval’ and Western periodisation from the outset. Using the dates 1200 and 1550 CE as boundaries for a global period of intercultural and intercontinental contact, the volume (despite its European epicentre) will not attempt to interpret ‘medieval’ beyond marking a chronological spectrum.
Research Interests: English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, and 15 moreCrusades, Pilgrimage, Medieval Islam, Medieval Scandinavia, Medieval Europe, Travel Literature, Medieval Balkans, Medieval Middle east, Medieval Russia, Global medieval history, Trade and travel in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Medieval Travels and Travellers, Medieval travel literature, Medieval Central Asia and Iran, and Medieval Chinese Literature
This special issue of The Chaucer Review announces the momentous discovery by Euan Roger and Sebastian Sobecki of new documents from the Court of King’s Bench that establish the nature of the Chaucer–Chaumpaigne court case. As editors, we... more
This special issue of The Chaucer Review announces the momentous discovery by Euan Roger and Sebastian Sobecki of new documents from the Court of King’s Bench that establish the nature of the Chaucer–Chaumpaigne court case. As editors, we are pleased that The Chaucer Review is the venue for making public newly uncovered documents housed at The National Archives in Kew. In addition, three appendices supplied by Roger and Sobecki provide important updates to Chaucer’s extant life-records: (1) a full chronology of the known Chaucer–Chaumpaigne record; (2) transcriptions and translations of all the pertinent documents; and (3) a calendar of the nine Chaucer life-records discovered since the publication of Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olsen’s Chaucer Life-Records (Oxford, 1966). This historic issue also holds a first-ever survey of the life-records of Cecily Chaumpaigne, compiled and assessed by Andrew Prescott, as well as three critical responses, authored by Sarah Baechle, Carissa M. Harris, and Samantha Katz Seal, which consider scholarly perspectives that may arise in light of these new facts and findings. An afterword composed by Roger and Prescott delineates the strong potential for finding yet more life-records on major medieval authors—records likely to still lie dormant in the archives. With this issue, The Chaucer Review hews close to its tradition as a forum for both new evidence and courageous opinion on the life and writings of Geoffrey Chaucer.
Research Interests:
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More... more
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). SAC also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.
Research Interests:
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More... more
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). SAC also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chaucer-related publications.
Research Interests:
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature addresses the need for an authoritative guide through the bewildering maze of medieval law as well as the need for concise examples of how the law infiltrated literary texts. The... more
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature addresses the need for an authoritative guide through the bewildering maze of medieval law as well as the need for concise examples of how the law infiltrated literary texts. The Companion combines accessible essays written by leading specialists in legal history with essays exploring literary conversations with the law in the works of later medieval authors
from Chaucer to Malory. The first half of this book contains detailed introductions to legal concepts, practices, and institutions in medieval England. In the second half, experts cover a number of texts and authors from across the later medieval period whose verse and prose can be understood as engaging with the law. In this way, the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature forms the basis for students wishing to explore this rich area or for scholars to familiarise themselves with literary uses of the law.
ISBN: 9781316632345
from Chaucer to Malory. The first half of this book contains detailed introductions to legal concepts, practices, and institutions in medieval England. In the second half, experts cover a number of texts and authors from across the later medieval period whose verse and prose can be understood as engaging with the law. In this way, the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature forms the basis for students wishing to explore this rich area or for scholars to familiarise themselves with literary uses of the law.
ISBN: 9781316632345
Research Interests: History, Law, Criminal Law, Canon Law, Constitutional Law, and 22 moreCivil Law, English Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Legal History, English History, English, History of English Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Church law, Marriage, Treason, Middle Ages, John Gower, Common Law, Thomas Malory, Piers Plowman, Medieval Law, and History of Treason
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More... more
Studies in the Age of Chaucer is the yearbook of the New Chaucer Society. It publishes articles on the writing of Chaucer and his contemporaries, their antecedents and successors, and their intellectual and social contexts. More generally, articles explore the culture and writing of later medieval Britain (1200-1500). SAC also includes an annotated bibliography and reviews of Chau cer-related publications.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, English Literature, Art History, Feminist Theory, and 15 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, Middle English, Medieval Studies, Literary Criticism, English, Literary Theory, Medieval Culture, Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, Thomas Hoccleve, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and John Gower
John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences. This book aims to provide an authoritative... more
John Skelton is a central literary figure and the leading poet during the first thirty years of Tudor rule. Nevertheless, he remains challenging and even contradictory for modern audiences.
This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite
This book aims to provide an authoritative guide to this complex poet and his works, setting him in his historical, religious, and social contexts. Beginning with an exploration of his life and career, it goes on to cover all the major aspects of his poetry, from the literary traditions in which he wrote and the form of his compositions to the manuscript contexts and later reception. Contributors: Tom Betteridge, Julia Boffey, John Burrow, David Carlson, Helen Cooper, Elisabeth Dutton, A.S.G. Edwards, Jane Griffiths, Nadine Kuipers, Carol Meale, John Scattergood, Sebastian Sobecki, Greg Waite
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, Law, Latin Literature, and 34 moreEnglish Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, Literature, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Humanism, Religion and Politics, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, Tudor England, English, History of English Literature, Early Modern England, Tudor History, Early Modern Literature, Medieval England, Early Modern Britain, Humanism, Renaissance literature, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, John Skelton, Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, Tudor Literature, Early Modern Drama, English language and literature, Henry VIII, Middle Ages, Neolatin Literature, Neolatin Studies, Medieval and Neolatin Texts, and Skelton Studies
postmedieval, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2016 Our Sea of Islands: New Approaches to British Insularity in the Late Middle Ages This is a special issue of 'postmedieval', co-edited by Matthew Boyd Goldie and Sebastian Sobecki Contents:... more
postmedieval, Volume 7, Issue 4, December 2016
Our Sea of Islands: New Approaches to British Insularity in the Late Middle Ages
This is a special issue of 'postmedieval', co-edited by Matthew Boyd Goldie and Sebastian Sobecki
Contents:
About the Cover
Sebastian Sobecki Pages 469-470
Editors’ Introduction
Our seas of islands
Matthew Boyd Goldie, Sebastian Sobecki Pages 471-483
The trouble with Britain
Patricia Clare Ingham Pages 484-496
Britain and the sea of darkness: Islandology in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-Mushtaq
Christine Chism Pages 497-510
From Pliny to Brexit: Spatial representation of the British Isles
Alfred Hiatt Pages 511-525
Brendan meets Columbus: A more commodious islescape
James L. Smith Pages 526-538
Fictions of the Island: girdling the sea
Lynn Staley Pages 539-550
The Bermuda assemblage: Toward a posthuman globalization
Steve Mentz Pages 551-564
Afterword
Peregrine Horden Pages 565-571
Book Review Essay
Dynamic fluidity and wet ontology: Current work on the archipelagic North Sea
Robert Rouse Pages 572-580
Our Sea of Islands: New Approaches to British Insularity in the Late Middle Ages
This is a special issue of 'postmedieval', co-edited by Matthew Boyd Goldie and Sebastian Sobecki
Contents:
About the Cover
Sebastian Sobecki Pages 469-470
Editors’ Introduction
Our seas of islands
Matthew Boyd Goldie, Sebastian Sobecki Pages 471-483
The trouble with Britain
Patricia Clare Ingham Pages 484-496
Britain and the sea of darkness: Islandology in al-Idrīsī’s Nuzhat al-Mushtaq
Christine Chism Pages 497-510
From Pliny to Brexit: Spatial representation of the British Isles
Alfred Hiatt Pages 511-525
Brendan meets Columbus: A more commodious islescape
James L. Smith Pages 526-538
Fictions of the Island: girdling the sea
Lynn Staley Pages 539-550
The Bermuda assemblage: Toward a posthuman globalization
Steve Mentz Pages 551-564
Afterword
Peregrine Horden Pages 565-571
Book Review Essay
Dynamic fluidity and wet ontology: Current work on the archipelagic North Sea
Robert Rouse Pages 572-580
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Cultural History, Geography, Comparative Literature, and 44 moreLatin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Latin American and Caribbean History, Medieval History, New Zealand Studies, British History, Pacific Island Studies, Chaucer, Middle English, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, Medieval Studies, Island Studies, Maritime History, Maritime Law, Arthurian Studies, English, Medieval Islam, Caribbean Studies, Law of the Sea, Insular Latin language and literature, Rivers, Medieval Europe, Medieval England, Ecocriticism, Historical maps, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Brittany, Pacific History, Periodization, Bermuda, Maritime, Early Medieval Britain and Ireland, Islands, King Edgar, Insularity, Medieval Britain, Early Medieval Northern Britain and Ireland, History of the Law of the Sea, Middle English texts especially Arthurian Literature, Seafaring, Epeli Hau'ofa, and Ecocritical Theory
Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local... more
Local and imperial, insular and expansive, both English yet British: geographically and culturally, the sea continues to shape changing models of Englishness. This volume traces the many literary origins of insular identity from local communities to the entire archipelago, laying open the continuities and disruptions in the sea's relationship with English identity in a British context. Ranging from the beginnings of insular literature to Victorian medievalisms, the subjects treated include King Arthur's struggle with muddy banks, the afterlife of Edgar's forged charters, Old English homilies and narratives of migration, Welsh and English ideas about Chester, Anglo-Norman views of the sea in the Vie de St Edmund and Waldef, post-Conquest cartography, The Book of Margery Kempe, the works of the Irish Stopford Brooke, and the making of an Anglo-British identity in Victorian Britain.
Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13713
Details: http://www.boydellandbrewer.com/store/viewItem.asp?idProduct=13713
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Victorian Studies, and 54 moreMedieval History, British History, Middle English, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, Medieval Studies, Island Studies, Maritime History, Old English Literature, Anglo-Saxon Studies (History), Arthurian Studies, Victorian Literature, Law of the Sea, National Identity, Medieval Europe, British Empire, Ecocriticism, Literature of the Sea, Margery Kempe, Old French, Anglo-Norman literature and culture, Anglo-Saxon literature and culture, Middle English literature and culture, Empire, Charters and Paleography, 12th century England, Samuel Pepys, Medieval Romance, John Adams, Britishness, Ecocriticism, travel writing, popular literature and culture, Ancient and Medieval Navigation, Englishness, Old English, Arthurian Romances, Medieval Maps, Portolan charts, Anglo-Saxon charters, king Arthur, adventus Saxonum, Islands, Dublin, King Edgar, East Anglia, Sea in literature, Old English homilies, Vie de St Edmund, Waldef, Stopford Brooke, Empress Matilda, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Insularity, Medieval Mappae Mundi, and King Stephen of England
This article takes issue with medievalists’ curated textual practices that coalesce on codicological intentionalism, that is, the implied position of (re)constructing authorial intention through the study of manuscripts and handwriting.... more
This article takes issue with medievalists’ curated textual practices that coalesce on codicological intentionalism, that is, the implied position of (re)constructing authorial intention through the study of manuscripts and handwriting. Rather than criticize this practice, the article challenges medievalists to come clean about what they are doing, to acknowledge their methodological vantage point and, thus, to admit to investments in the project of intentionalism. Authorial intention is discussed as a function of the text/context debate; the tripartite division of authorship is analyzed in premodern settings; how codicological intentionalism operates is explained; and, finally, this phenomenon is shown to have parallels in a cognate discourse that has been ignored by literary medievalists, namely, the study of the Synoptic Gospels. Codicological intentionalism balances materialist with historicist certainties and probabilities; it offers a viable methodology for reconciling textual with authorial objectives.
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This article concentrates on the manuscripts that Thomas Hoccleve used for his translations of the two tales from the Gesta Romanorum in his Series and demonstrates that the account of assembling the Series that Hoccleve's narrative... more
This article concentrates on the manuscripts that Thomas Hoccleve used for his translations of the two tales from the Gesta Romanorum in his Series and demonstrates that the account of assembling the Series that Hoccleve's narrative persona, Thomas, recounts in the framework narrative is broadly corroborated by the surviving manuscript evidence. This article shows that London, British Library, MS Harley 219, a literary manuscript discovered in 2018 and thought to have been written mostly in Hoccleve's hand, preceded the composition of the Series. Next, a collation of Harley 219 with the recently published edition of the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum and with Hoccleve's translation of the tales from the Gesta demonstrates that Harley 219 was the source text for Hoccleve's translations. Finally, this article identifies the surviving copy of the Gesta Romanorum that Hoccleve's persona claims to have been using for the translations in the Series. This, in turn, not only strengthens the reliability of Thomas's persona and the credibility of his anonymous interlocutor, the Friend, but it also requires a reassessment of current notions of late medieval authorship in autobiographical settings. I am deeply indebted to Misty Schieberle, David Watt, the anonymous readers for this journal, and the editor and entire team at Speculum.
Research Interests: Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Literature, and 12 moreMedieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Literary Theory, Hoccleve, Intention, Middle English literature and culture, Authorship, Thomas Hoccleve, Medieval Latin, Intentionalism, and Gesta Romanorum
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 10 moreMedieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Late Medieval English History, Hoccleve, Medieval England, Medieval Literature (English), The Hundred Years War, Middle English literature and culture, and Thomas Hoccleve
This article introduces two records that clarify the relationship between Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne. The new documents also demonstrate the relevance of a known Chaucer life-record that previously had not been associated... more
This article introduces two records that clarify the relationship between Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne. The new documents also demonstrate the relevance of a known Chaucer life-record that previously had not been associated with this case. Our findings offer a radically different understanding of the documentary evidence and establish that Chaucer and Chaumpaigne were not opponents but belonged to the same party in a legal dispute with Chaumpaigne’s former employer, Thomas Staundon, who had sued them both under the Statute of Laborers. Chaumpaigne’s quitclaims for Chaucer offered the most expedient legal path under the Statute of Laborers for both Chaucer and Chaumpaigne to demonstrate that she had left her employment with Staundon voluntarily, as opposed to being coerced or abducted (raptus), before commencing work for Chaucer.
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The explosive growth of Europe’s literary culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was unprecedented as an urban phenomenon. Cities began to emerge as literary centers, and clerks and commercial scribes played a central role in... more
The explosive growth of Europe’s literary culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was unprecedented as an urban phenomenon. Cities began to emerge as literary centers, and clerks and commercial scribes played a central role in this cultural shift. In London the hub for this activity was the city of Westminster and the area around Rolls House and Chancery Lane.
New findings reveal that London's clerks and scriveners, who moved between English, French, and Latin, formed professional “communities of practice,” which played a significant part in the dissemination of literary manuscripts. These findings are transforming our knowledge of the contexts of English literary culture, book production, and ideas of authorship. This article will concentrate on a few connected communities of practice centered on Westminster and civic clerks, and on the use of the secretary script during this period. In the world of London’s communities of practice, the poet and Privy Seal clerk Thomas Hoccleve emerges as a central figure.
New findings reveal that London's clerks and scriveners, who moved between English, French, and Latin, formed professional “communities of practice,” which played a significant part in the dissemination of literary manuscripts. These findings are transforming our knowledge of the contexts of English literary culture, book production, and ideas of authorship. This article will concentrate on a few connected communities of practice centered on Westminster and civic clerks, and on the use of the secretary script during this period. In the world of London’s communities of practice, the poet and Privy Seal clerk Thomas Hoccleve emerges as a central figure.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: British Literature, Palaeogeography, French History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 10 moreBritish History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Medieval Studies, Legal History, Administrative History, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, The Hundred Years War, Handwriting, Paleogeography, and Anglo French Relations
[Now available under open access through the link below] Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting... more
[Now available under open access through the link below]
Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting of his fellow clerks. This article is the first attempt to identify and describe the hands of a number of clerks who wrote for the Privy Seal and for the Council in the fifteenth century. In Part 1, I identify the handwriting of Hoccleve’s fellow clerks, including William Alberton, Henry Benet, John Claydon, John Hethe, John Offord, and Richard Priour, adding writs, letters, charters, and manuscripts in their hands. I also identify the hand of the Council clerk Richard Caudray and attribute further records to the Council and Privy Seal clerk Robert Frye. Part 2 offers a reconsideration of the features of Hoccleve’s handwriting in the light of the new findings. This article also identifies the scribal stints and hands in four documents produced by Privy Seal clerks: British Library, MS Add. 24,062 (Hoccleve’s Formulary); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F. iii (Part 1 of the Book of the Council); BL, MS Harley 219; and Edinburgh University Library, MS 183 (Privy Seal and Signet formulary, or ‘Royal Letter Book’). This article reveals the extent to which Privy Seal clerks participated in the copying of literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of the secretary script used by government scribes.
Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting of his fellow clerks. This article is the first attempt to identify and describe the hands of a number of clerks who wrote for the Privy Seal and for the Council in the fifteenth century. In Part 1, I identify the handwriting of Hoccleve’s fellow clerks, including William Alberton, Henry Benet, John Claydon, John Hethe, John Offord, and Richard Priour, adding writs, letters, charters, and manuscripts in their hands. I also identify the hand of the Council clerk Richard Caudray and attribute further records to the Council and Privy Seal clerk Robert Frye. Part 2 offers a reconsideration of the features of Hoccleve’s handwriting in the light of the new findings. This article also identifies the scribal stints and hands in four documents produced by Privy Seal clerks: British Library, MS Add. 24,062 (Hoccleve’s Formulary); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F. iii (Part 1 of the Book of the Council); BL, MS Harley 219; and Edinburgh University Library, MS 183 (Privy Seal and Signet formulary, or ‘Royal Letter Book’). This article reveals the extent to which Privy Seal clerks participated in the copying of literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of the secretary script used by government scribes.
Research Interests: Diplomatic History, Palaeogeography, English Literature, French History, Medieval Literature, and 12 moreMedieval History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Medieval Studies, Legal History, Administrative History, English, Diplomatic Studies, Paleography, Codicology of medieval manuscripts, The Hundred Years War, Thomas Hoccleve, and Handwriting
In a note published in this journal in 2019, Sebastian Sobecki drew attention to a new life-record for John Lydgate. The document, which dates to late January or early February 1425, is of significance because it offers the earliest... more
In a note published in this journal in 2019, Sebastian Sobecki drew attention to a new life-record for John Lydgate. The document, which dates to late January or early February 1425, is of significance because it offers the earliest surviving record of Lydgate's tenure as prior of Hatfield Regis. However, the record only refers to him as “John, prior of Hatfield Regis.” Here the author would like to present three new life-records from 1424, all of which mention Lydgate by name and identify him as prior of Hatfield Regis, therefore pushing back the evidence for his time as prior by a calendar year.
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Little can be said with any certainty about the earliest reception of Chaucer’s works. We do not really know how his writings were experienced. Were the poems enjoyed in silence by individual readers who... more
Little can be said with any certainty about the earliest reception of Chaucer’s works. We do not really know how his writings were experienced. Were the poems enjoyed in silence by individual readers who may or may not have mouthed the words as they were moving their fingers along each line? Or were his works read aloud to groups of eager listeners, as is suggested by the celebrated frontispiece illumination in the copy of Troilus and Criseyde in Cambridge Corpus Christi College, MS 61? Where and when, in which locations and on what occasions, did Chaucer’s readers first experience his poetry? If some of his works were performed, were these readings punctuated by interjections or even topical exchanges? Were his earliest audiences socialy diverse?
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The purpose of this note is to introduce a minor new life record for the poet John Gower. As many studies have shown, Gower’s poetry is informed by a deep interest in the law. Not only does the law pervade his writings, but a number of... more
The purpose of this note is to introduce a minor new life record for the poet John Gower. As many studies have shown, Gower’s poetry is informed by a deep interest in the law. Not only does the law pervade his writings, but a number of legal cases involving Gower have survived, the best known being his contested acquisition of the manor of Aldington Septvauns in Kent in 1365
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This note introduces three new life records for the poet John Skelton. These documents shed light on his life between 1512 and 1516, and they show that Skelton remained in Diss in Norfolk into 1514,... more
This note introduces three new life records for the poet John Skelton. These documents shed light on his life between 1512 and 1516, and they show that Skelton remained in Diss in Norfolk into 1514, and left Nor-folk at or shortly before the beginning of 1516. All three documents are plea entries from the Court of Common Pleas. In the first record, Skelton sub-mits a plea of debt against the goldsmith John Page of Bury St. Edmunds in Hilary Term of 1514, and in the second two, the poet appears as a defendant in two suits of debt dating from Hilary Term 1516, filed by the executors of Sir William Danvers. Sebastian Sobecki reproduces, transcribes, and translates all three documents in this note.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, and 15 moreMiddle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Legal History, Tudor England, English, Tudor History, Early Modern Literature, Early Modern Britain, John Skelton, Middle English literature and culture, Tudor Literature, English legal history, Common Law, and Sanctuary
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, and 16 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Manuscript Studies, History Of London, History of English Literature, Archives, Late Medieval English History, Literary History, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, London, Inns of Court, Medieval English History, and Inns of Court, Middle Temple
Research Interests: Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreMiddle English, Medieval Studies, English History, English, History of English Literature, Law and Literature, Literature and Law, Middle English literature and culture, Thomas Hoccleve, Common Law, Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, Interpretation of law or statutes, Lancastrian Political History, George Ashby, and Osbern Bokenham
Chaucer is arguably one of medieval England’s greatest travel writers. Voyages and pilgrimages pervade his surviving oeuvre; they guide and organize a number of his works, culminating in the pilgrimage framework that structures the... more
Chaucer is arguably one of medieval England’s greatest travel writers. Voyages and pilgrimages pervade his surviving oeuvre; they guide and organize a number of his works, culminating in the pilgrimage framework that structures the Canterbury Tales. Travel in all its real and fictional forms and with all its implications punctuates Chaucer’s texts.
Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, and 15 moreMedieval History, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Pilgrimage, English, Medieval England, Travel Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, Travel, Middle English Literature, and Canterbury Tales
This essay introduces four new life records for John Lydgate, dating from 1425 and 1427. All four are legal records from the Court of Common Pleas produced during his tenure as prior of Hatfield Regis. The most important of these,... more
This essay introduces four new life records for John Lydgate, dating from 1425 and 1427. All four are legal records from the Court of Common Pleas produced during his tenure as prior of Hatfield Regis. The most important of these, discussed here in detail, is the first item, a plea ordering Lydgate to enclose fields belonging to his priory. This document, dating from January or February 1425, is the earliest record identifying Lydgate as prior of Hatfield Regis, and it may suggest that he was already in France at this time.
Research Interests: History, Law, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreMiddle English, Literature, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, English, Archives, Late Medieval English History, Medieval England, Medieval Literature (English), Lydgate, France, The Hundred Years War, Middle English literature and culture, English law, and John Lydgate
Research Interests: Economic History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, and 11 moreMiddle English, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Medieval Europe, Travel Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Travel, Middle Ages, Canterbury Tales, Anglo-European Relations, and Libelle of Englyshe Polycye
Research Interests: History, Canon Law, Constitutional Law, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 25 moreMedieval History, Early Modern History, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Legal History, Tudor England, English, History Of London, Law and Literature, Tudor History, Early Modern Literature, Renaissance literature, Medieval Canon & Roman Law, John Skelton, Tudor Literature, Early Tudor Literature, Medieval Canon Law, Tudor/Stuart Britain, London, Henry VIII, Common Law, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Constitutional Law Theory, Skelton Studies, and Cardinal Wolsey
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Since Piers Plowman occupies a central place in the study of medieval English literature, much attention has been paid to the vexed question of the poem's authorship. This justified interest in revealing the human agent behind the family... more
Since Piers Plowman occupies a central place in the study of medieval English literature, much attention has been paid to the vexed question of the poem's authorship. This justified interest in revealing the human agent behind the family of interrelated versions of the poem, usually named A, B, and C, continues to feed a vibrant industry of speculative scholarship on the person behind the poem. This article reassesses the relevance of the 'Langland' myth for the contemporary reception of the poem, and argues that medieval audiences of the B Version associated the work with a 'Long Will' author-persona. In this context, the case of a previously unnoticed Norfolk poacher in the weeks leading up to the 1381 rising, a William Longewille, and his encroachment on the estate of the former sheriff and tax collector Richard Holdych echo the Ploughing of the Half-Acre in Piers Plowman, in particular as it is presented in the B Version of the poem. As a result, this article proposes that both the A and B Versions of the poem may have been available to (some of) the rebels of 1381, and that the B Version may have circulated in Norfolk along Cluniac and Benedictine networks before and after the unrest.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 58 moreMiddle English and Middle Scots Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Religion and Politics, Peasant Studies, Literary Criticism, Revolutions, Medieval English Literature, English History, Authorship Attribution, Politics, English, Manuscript Studies, Archives, Late Medieval English History, Medieval Church History, Literary Theory, Political History, Resistance (Social), Medieval England, Langland, Social History, Social movements and revolution, Literary History, Monasticism, Social Class, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Middle English literature and culture, Authorship, England, William Langland, Cluniac Studies, Rebellion, Alliterative verse, Manuscripts, Revolution, Middle Ages, Hunting, Resistance, Middle English Literature, Public Uprising, Benedictine Monasticism, Piers Plowman, Late Medieval England, Norfolk, Richard II, Medieval Revolts, Poaching, Law and Justice in Medieval England, Uprisings, History of taxation, Cluniac Monasticism, Peasants Revolt, Popular Uprising, Theory and Rebellion and Revolution, and Theories of Authorship
This article will attempt to take stock of what we know about Chaucer’s earliest audiences, that is, about uses of and references to his work made during his lifetime. Relevant new research on manuscript use and ownership has been... more
This article will attempt to take stock of what we know about Chaucer’s earliest audiences, that is, about uses of and references to his work made during his lifetime. Relevant new research on manuscript use and ownership has been included in the case of Thomas Hoccleve and the scrivener Thomas Spencer. In addition to various named addressees of Chaucer’s works – Peter Bukton, Henry Scogan and Philip de la Vache – this brief survey lists contemporary references to Chaucer and his works in the poetry of John Gower, Eustache Deschamps, John Clanvowe and Thomas Usk.
Research Interests: English Literature, Reception Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, and 16 moreMiddle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Audience Studies, Medieval English Literature, Audience and Reception Studies, History Of London, Medieval England, Audience, Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, London, John Gower, Middle English Literature, and Thomas Usk
By showing that the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales was inspired by Harry Bailey's 1381 poll-tax records for Southwark, this article offers a new interpretive context for Chaucer's best-known work. During the second half of the... more
By showing that the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales was inspired by Harry Bailey's 1381 poll-tax records for Southwark, this article offers a new interpretive context for Chaucer's best-known work.
During the second half of the 1380s, John Gower, the leading fourteenth-century poet and an acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, was working on his longest English poem, the Confessio Amantis. Chaucer, in turn, is believed to have been writing some of the material that would later form The Canterbury Tales. In addition, Chaucer was probably finishing Troilus and Criseyde, which must have been available before March 1388, at least in part, to Thomas Usk, the poet and undersheriff of London, who names the poem and borrows from Chaucer’s Boece in his Testament of Love. It is in the Confessio and in the Troilus, that is, in works written in the second half of the 1380s, that Chaucer and Gower first refer to one another in a literary context. The only other instance that connects the two names is a 1378 legal record, in which Chaucer hands power of attorney to Gower and the lawyer Richard Forster. Rather than reading this document as proof of Gower and Chaucer’s supposed personal friendship, I adduce new evidence for Gower’s legal training that suggests that the 1378 record was a purely professional arrangement—Chaucer might simply have needed a team of lawyers at the time. There is no reason to read this document through the prism of an instance of poetically embedded praise some ten years later, particularly given Gower’s likely career as a lawyer.
The new evidence for Gower’s legal training changes what we know of the relationship between the two poets and, by virtue of pushing forward their literary acquaintance to the late 1380s, brings into sharp relief their deep ties to Southwark, where Gower may have resided at the time and where Chaucer launched his Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, on closer inspection, this new focus on Gower’s and Chaucer’s work in Southwark has the potential not only to foreground the role of an emerging literary culture in the area but to challenge existing models of reading The Canterbury Tales and modify our understanding of what Chaucer had in mind when he embarked on this collection of tales.
During the second half of the 1380s, John Gower, the leading fourteenth-century poet and an acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, was working on his longest English poem, the Confessio Amantis. Chaucer, in turn, is believed to have been writing some of the material that would later form The Canterbury Tales. In addition, Chaucer was probably finishing Troilus and Criseyde, which must have been available before March 1388, at least in part, to Thomas Usk, the poet and undersheriff of London, who names the poem and borrows from Chaucer’s Boece in his Testament of Love. It is in the Confessio and in the Troilus, that is, in works written in the second half of the 1380s, that Chaucer and Gower first refer to one another in a literary context. The only other instance that connects the two names is a 1378 legal record, in which Chaucer hands power of attorney to Gower and the lawyer Richard Forster. Rather than reading this document as proof of Gower and Chaucer’s supposed personal friendship, I adduce new evidence for Gower’s legal training that suggests that the 1378 record was a purely professional arrangement—Chaucer might simply have needed a team of lawyers at the time. There is no reason to read this document through the prism of an instance of poetically embedded praise some ten years later, particularly given Gower’s likely career as a lawyer.
The new evidence for Gower’s legal training changes what we know of the relationship between the two poets and, by virtue of pushing forward their literary acquaintance to the late 1380s, brings into sharp relief their deep ties to Southwark, where Gower may have resided at the time and where Chaucer launched his Canterbury Tales. Furthermore, on closer inspection, this new focus on Gower’s and Chaucer’s work in Southwark has the potential not only to foreground the role of an emerging literary culture in the area but to challenge existing models of reading The Canterbury Tales and modify our understanding of what Chaucer had in mind when he embarked on this collection of tales.
Research Interests: History, Law, English Literature, Reception Studies, Medieval Literature, and 43 moreMedieval History, Chaucer, Middle English, Medieval Studies, Audience Studies, Medieval urban history, Medieval English Literature, English History, Audience and Reception Studies, English, Manuscript Studies, History Of London, History of English Literature, Archives, Late Medieval English History, Medieval Church History, Medieval England, Patronage (History), Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Middle English literature and culture, English law, England, Geoffrey Chaucer, London Writing, Medieval London, London, Manuscripts, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse poetry and prose, Middle Ages, John Gower, Scribes, Middle English Literature, Common Law, Southwark, History of the Common Law, Richard II, Historical Documents, Troilus and Criseyde, Medieval Law, Medieval scribes, History of taxation, Peasants Revolt, and William of Wykeham
Epeli Hau‘ofa’s essay on a ‘sea of islands’ was intended to offer a bottom-up, corrective, and holistic view of Oceania. Instead of colonial images of the Pacific as a vast ocean with tiny isolated islands in it, he included the sea as... more
Epeli Hau‘ofa’s essay on a ‘sea of islands’ was intended to offer a bottom-up, corrective, and holistic view of Oceania. Instead of colonial images of the Pacific as a vast ocean with tiny isolated islands in it, he included the sea as part of what can constitute a home and reimagined Oceania as historically inflected ‘networks . . . integrated by trading and cultural exchange systems’ (Hau‘ofa, 1993, 7–9). From a perspective on the sea, a large landmass can be a haven, danger, or obstruction. Smaller islands might not only block travel, but they can also offer the interactive space of a shore combined with a more accessible interior. Islands may also reticulate in a variety of forms, sometimes presenting series of lands that offer waystations for sea travel. Seas additionally narrow and transition to rivers that can lead far inland. Although an idealistic strain in Hau’ofa’s and others’ visions of Pacific and other maritime networks has been criticized, the point remains that while some oceanic expanses can present a barrier, they tend instead to facilitate travel.
Research Interests: British Literature, History, Geography, Historical Geography, Cartography, and 31 moreComparative Literature, Medieval Philosophy, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, New Zealand Studies, British History, Pacific Island Studies, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, Medieval Studies, Island Studies, Maritime History, Maritime Law, English, History of Cartography, Modern British History, Medieval Europe, British Empire, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Historical maps, British Imperialism, History of New Zealand, Pacific History, World Map, Medieval Chronicles, Middle Ages, Islands, Admiralty and maritime law, Islands and Archipelagos, and Ranulph Higden
"Held by the Teutonic Order since 1308, Danzig received the Order's proprietary Kulm Law in 1343. In 1361, the city proceeded to full membership of the Hanseatic League and sided with the trade federation in its dispute with Denmark and... more
"Held by the Teutonic Order since 1308, Danzig received the Order's proprietary Kulm Law in 1343. In 1361, the city proceeded to full membership of the Hanseatic League and sided with the trade federation in its dispute with Denmark and Sweden (1367). By 1377 Danzig had passed Elbing and Thorn to become Prussia's most prosperous city; in the early fifteenth century it would vie with Lübeck for pride of place in the League itself. After the Teutonic Order's defeat at Grunwald (the First Battle of Tannenberg) in 1410, Danzig sought protection from the King of Poland, but the Order returned to the city in the subsequent year. In 1416, widespread resentment of the monastic state led to open unrest in Danzig.
The Teutonic Order: Regeneration's scope falls squarely into an extended period of Danzig's subjection to the Teutonic Order, spanning the years 1308 to 1454 (briefly interrupted in 1410-11). For much of the fourteenth century, the literary tastes of Danzig's increasingly confident merchant community were overshadowed by the administrative and ideological needs of the Order's vast monastic state. The city's cultural life was shaped by the Teutonic Order, so much so that Danzig's literary traditions cannot be studied in isolation from the 'literature of the Prussian region' (a recent coinage by Ralf Päsler). No longer strictly synonymous with Deutschordensliteratur, Prussian and Danzig writing nevertheless stood in the service of the Order. Apart from officially sanctioned chronicles of the monastic state, literature was rarely secular during this period, and the high mobility of texts along the Order's network of its regional centres of learning makes it often difficult to attribute works exclusively to a particular location.
Texts: The Order's industrious chroniclers dominate literary output: Peter of Dusburg's Chronican terrae Prussiae, ca. 1326; Nicholas of Jeroschin's German translation, Di kronike von Pruzinlant, ca. 1340; Hermann of Wartenberg's Chronicon Livoniae, ca. 1378; Peter Suchenwirt's Von Herzog Albrechts Ritterschaft, ca. 1377; Wigand of Marburg's Chronica nova Prutenica, ca. 1400; and John of Posilge's Prussian Chronicle, ca. 1420. Besides historiography, biblical translations were prominent: The Order may even have possessed an almost complete German translation of the Bible. The Teutonic Knights were also instrumental in encouraging and disseminating works of (often vernacular) popular devotion, such as John of Marienwerder's Latin and German writings about Dorothea of Montau, a mystic and anchoress married to a Danzig merchant, or Philipp of Seitz's exemplar of Marian devotion, the Marienleben.
The Hanseatic League: A gateway for Poland-Lithuania's exports of fur, timber, Hungarian copper, and Polish lead, Danzig's port emerged as the largest in the Order's territory during the second half of the fourteenth century. The city's rapidly rising position in the Hanseatic League attracted considerable numbers of English and Flemish merchants during the second half of the fourteenth century. Textual production was largely administrative, with law and shipping regulations being the most prominent. At around this time, Danzig began to develop and codify Prussian shipping law on the basis of imported Flemish versions of the Laws of Oleron, the Seerecht von Damme and the Ordinancie. Throughout the fourteenth century, the prodigious output of administrative writing in Danzig and the increasingly refined tastes of the affluent merchant class laid the foundations for the later fifteenth-century reception of romances such as Flos vnde Blankeflos and other secular texts. Nevertheless, literary - though not necessarily textual - traditions flourished in the form of the city's confraternity of St. George which erected its first Artushof between 1348 and 1350. Later, another organization that drew its inspiration from a literary tradition, the Bank of Roland, would also gather in the Artushof.
Texts: Various legal writings, including the Seerecht von Damme and the Ordinancie (1407); two Low German copies of Steven of Dorpat's translation of the Disticha Catonis (14th c.); a discussion of Arthurian traditions and the Brotherhood of St. George.
Ole Benedictow's reassessment of the Black Death's considerable and remarkably early impact on the region as a whole has not yet been taken up by Polish and German scholars, but it explains why Danzig was one of the first cities to shake off the pandemic and boom economically during a period of relative stagnation in Western Europe. However, the Order's iron grip on the city meant that for Danzig the fourteenth century was a period of literary incubation with a delayed effect: the city's exposure to the bureaucratic apparatus and the religious modes favoured by the Teutonic Order would only come to fruition in the self-confident literary practices of Danzig's chronicles, commissioned during the fifteenth century. And yet, the sheer amount of missed opportunities to distance the history of Danzig from that of the Order indicates only a very gradual literary coming of age for the city."
The Teutonic Order: Regeneration's scope falls squarely into an extended period of Danzig's subjection to the Teutonic Order, spanning the years 1308 to 1454 (briefly interrupted in 1410-11). For much of the fourteenth century, the literary tastes of Danzig's increasingly confident merchant community were overshadowed by the administrative and ideological needs of the Order's vast monastic state. The city's cultural life was shaped by the Teutonic Order, so much so that Danzig's literary traditions cannot be studied in isolation from the 'literature of the Prussian region' (a recent coinage by Ralf Päsler). No longer strictly synonymous with Deutschordensliteratur, Prussian and Danzig writing nevertheless stood in the service of the Order. Apart from officially sanctioned chronicles of the monastic state, literature was rarely secular during this period, and the high mobility of texts along the Order's network of its regional centres of learning makes it often difficult to attribute works exclusively to a particular location.
Texts: The Order's industrious chroniclers dominate literary output: Peter of Dusburg's Chronican terrae Prussiae, ca. 1326; Nicholas of Jeroschin's German translation, Di kronike von Pruzinlant, ca. 1340; Hermann of Wartenberg's Chronicon Livoniae, ca. 1378; Peter Suchenwirt's Von Herzog Albrechts Ritterschaft, ca. 1377; Wigand of Marburg's Chronica nova Prutenica, ca. 1400; and John of Posilge's Prussian Chronicle, ca. 1420. Besides historiography, biblical translations were prominent: The Order may even have possessed an almost complete German translation of the Bible. The Teutonic Knights were also instrumental in encouraging and disseminating works of (often vernacular) popular devotion, such as John of Marienwerder's Latin and German writings about Dorothea of Montau, a mystic and anchoress married to a Danzig merchant, or Philipp of Seitz's exemplar of Marian devotion, the Marienleben.
The Hanseatic League: A gateway for Poland-Lithuania's exports of fur, timber, Hungarian copper, and Polish lead, Danzig's port emerged as the largest in the Order's territory during the second half of the fourteenth century. The city's rapidly rising position in the Hanseatic League attracted considerable numbers of English and Flemish merchants during the second half of the fourteenth century. Textual production was largely administrative, with law and shipping regulations being the most prominent. At around this time, Danzig began to develop and codify Prussian shipping law on the basis of imported Flemish versions of the Laws of Oleron, the Seerecht von Damme and the Ordinancie. Throughout the fourteenth century, the prodigious output of administrative writing in Danzig and the increasingly refined tastes of the affluent merchant class laid the foundations for the later fifteenth-century reception of romances such as Flos vnde Blankeflos and other secular texts. Nevertheless, literary - though not necessarily textual - traditions flourished in the form of the city's confraternity of St. George which erected its first Artushof between 1348 and 1350. Later, another organization that drew its inspiration from a literary tradition, the Bank of Roland, would also gather in the Artushof.
Texts: Various legal writings, including the Seerecht von Damme and the Ordinancie (1407); two Low German copies of Steven of Dorpat's translation of the Disticha Catonis (14th c.); a discussion of Arthurian traditions and the Brotherhood of St. George.
Ole Benedictow's reassessment of the Black Death's considerable and remarkably early impact on the region as a whole has not yet been taken up by Polish and German scholars, but it explains why Danzig was one of the first cities to shake off the pandemic and boom economically during a period of relative stagnation in Western Europe. However, the Order's iron grip on the city meant that for Danzig the fourteenth century was a period of literary incubation with a delayed effect: the city's exposure to the bureaucratic apparatus and the religious modes favoured by the Teutonic Order would only come to fruition in the self-confident literary practices of Danzig's chronicles, commissioned during the fifteenth century. And yet, the sheer amount of missed opportunities to distance the history of Danzig from that of the Order indicates only a very gradual literary coming of age for the city."
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, German Studies, German Literature, and 40 moreLatin Literature, Medieval Literature, Theology, Late Middle Ages, Medieval History, German History, Medieval German Literature, Literature, Medieval Studies, Polish History, Christian Mysticism, Baltic Studies, Arthurian Studies, Medieval Latin Literature, Baltic Sea Region Studies, Mysticism, Medieval Europe, German Literature and Culture, Polish Studies, History of Prussia, Poland, German, Medieval Germany, Medieval Romance, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Germany, Teutonic Knights, Baltic Crusade, Middle Ages, Prussian History, history of Poland, Pomorze, Medieval Poland, Hanseatic League, Teutonic Order, Danzig, Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, History of the Baltic Sea Region, History of City Gdansk, and Gdańsk
"Writers in late-fourteenth-century Cracow quickly found themselves at the centre of a rapidly expanding realm with significant new political, administrative, and ideological needs. In March 1386, Poland’s thirteen-year-old monarch,... more
"Writers in late-fourteenth-century Cracow quickly found themselves at the centre of a rapidly expanding realm with significant new political, administrative, and ideological needs. In March 1386, Poland’s thirteen-year-old monarch, Jadwiga of Anjou, married the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Jogaila, who had renounced his paganism and was baptised as Władysław Jagiełło only a month earlier. What Jagiełło brought to the table was Europe’s biggest political prize: the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a vast territorial expanse that stretched from the Baltic coast to the Black Sea, covering modern-day Belarus, the Ukraine, and Western Russia. Politically distinct, the two realms were increasingly ruled as one commonwealth from Poland’s capital city, Cracow. Although the Lithuanians were mostly pagans, the core of the territory conquered by the Grand Duchy, Ruthenia, followed the Eastern rite, and Orthodoxy emerged as the main - though not the most prestigious - denomination in a multi-ethnic realm ruled from Catholic Cracow.
While many devotional and historiographical works continued to be produced, the city’s strong Latin writing tradition supplied new secular works for the growing kingdom: John of Czarnkow produced the first Polish memoir, the Chronicon Polonorum, while Jagiełło’s secretary, Bishop Stanisław Ciołek, extolled the city’s virtues in his panegyrics. Throughout much of the period patronage of learning and literature centred on the royal court and on the queen in particular. In 1400 Jadwiga re-founded Casimir the Great’s University, and it is believed that the splendid Psałterz floriański, a trilingual psalter written in Latin, Polish, and German that would become a milestone in the development of vernacular Polish literature, was produced for her."
While many devotional and historiographical works continued to be produced, the city’s strong Latin writing tradition supplied new secular works for the growing kingdom: John of Czarnkow produced the first Polish memoir, the Chronicon Polonorum, while Jagiełło’s secretary, Bishop Stanisław Ciołek, extolled the city’s virtues in his panegyrics. Throughout much of the period patronage of learning and literature centred on the royal court and on the queen in particular. In 1400 Jadwiga re-founded Casimir the Great’s University, and it is believed that the splendid Psałterz floriański, a trilingual psalter written in Latin, Polish, and German that would become a milestone in the development of vernacular Polish literature, was produced for her."
Research Interests: History, Comparative Literature, Medieval Literature, Late Middle Ages, Medieval History, and 22 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Polish History, Literary Criticism, Medieval Latin Literature, Medieval Church History, Polish Literature, Medieval Europe, Polish Studies, Literary History, Poland, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Medieval Latin, Old Polish literature, Medieval Chronicles, Piast Dynasty, Middle Ages, history of Poland, Kraków, Medieval Poland, Cracow, and średniowiecze
"An Imperial Free City and the secret capital of the Holy Roman Empire, Nuremberg saw its privileged status officially sealed with Charles IV's Golden Bull of 1356, which stipulated that the first diet of a new emperor be held in this... more
"An Imperial Free City and the secret capital of the Holy Roman Empire, Nuremberg saw its privileged status officially sealed with Charles IV's Golden Bull of 1356, which stipulated that the first diet of a new emperor be held in this city. Nuremberg's central geographic position in the Empire not only contributed to its prestige among Germany's cities but it also placed the city at a nodal point in European commerce: the great overland trading routes connecting Northern Europe with Italy converged on Nuremberg.
The city's role as a cultural hub in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been well documented, but the foundations for Nuremberg's many lasting contributions to the dissemination of printed books and Humanist learning were laid in the preceding century, when the city emerged as a powerful centre of international banking and commerce. Late medieval writing in Nuremberg ranges from the vibrant dramatic tradition of the Shrovetide plays, or Fastnachtspiele, over religious works and monastic rules, to the sober city chronicle, the Nürnberger Bürgerbuch. But above all, the fourteenth century saw the remarkable urban literary institution of the Meistersinger, a guild of poets and singers drawn from a cross-section of the population, gain a foothold in Nuremberg."
The city's role as a cultural hub in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been well documented, but the foundations for Nuremberg's many lasting contributions to the dissemination of printed books and Humanist learning were laid in the preceding century, when the city emerged as a powerful centre of international banking and commerce. Late medieval writing in Nuremberg ranges from the vibrant dramatic tradition of the Shrovetide plays, or Fastnachtspiele, over religious works and monastic rules, to the sober city chronicle, the Nürnberger Bürgerbuch. But above all, the fourteenth century saw the remarkable urban literary institution of the Meistersinger, a guild of poets and singers drawn from a cross-section of the population, gain a foothold in Nuremberg."
Research Interests: Christianity, History, German Studies, German Literature, Women's Studies, and 25 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, German History, Medieval German Literature, Women's writing, Literature, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Christian Mysticism, Women's Literature, Medieval Women, Mysticism, Beguines, German Literature and Culture, Monasticism, Medieval Germany, Women and Gender Studies, Middle High German language and literature, Nuremberg, Nuns, Medieval Women Writers, Mittelalterliche Geschichte, Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters, Medieval Women and Gender, and Kloster Engelthal
The authorship of The Book of Margery Kempe has been the subject of much debate ever since the sole manuscript copy of the text was identified by Hope Emily Allen in 1934. My paper presents two pieces of new evidence relating to Margery... more
The authorship of The Book of Margery Kempe has been the subject of much debate ever since the sole manuscript copy of the text was identified by Hope Emily Allen in 1934. My paper presents two pieces of new evidence relating to Margery Kempe’s son and to Robert Spryngolde, her confessor. The first item, a letter prepared for her son in Danzig (modern Gdańsk) in 1431, discloses the son’s name and the reasons for his journey to Lynn. This information, in turn, sheds new light on the account of The Book’s production as given in the Proem. As a result, the discovery of the letter corroborates the theory that the son was Kempe’s first scribe. A second previously unknown document shows the extent of Robert Spryngolde’s ties to Margery Kempe’s family, strengthening his role as the clerical scribe behind much of The Book. Both findings help to anchor the supposedly autobiographical narrative in its immediate historical situation, thereby strengthening the historicity of the work. Finally, I offer a revised explanation for the collaborative model behind the production of this text.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, English Literature, Women's Studies, and 51 moreFeminist Theory, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Women's History, Middle English, Women's writing, Literature, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Literary Criticism, Medieval English Literature, English History, Women's Literature, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Women, Autobiography, Mysticism, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Medieval Church History, Paleography, Biography, Women, Feminism, Medieval Europe, Medieval England, Church History, Book History (History), Memoir and Autobiography, Medieval Literature (English), Margery Kempe, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Middle English literature and culture, Authorship, Palaeography, Medieval Mysticism, English language and literature, Manuscripts, Middle Ages, Medieval Poland, Hanseatic League, Hanseatic Trade, Hanseatic studies, Danzig, Hanseatic History, Female Mystics In the Middle Ages, History of City Gdansk, Gdansk, The Book of Margery Kempe, and Gdańsk
Available free on Oxford Handbooks Online: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935338-e-141 This article examines how English texts register expansive geographical encounters in the... more
Available free on Oxford Handbooks Online: http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935338-e-141
This article examines how English texts register expansive geographical encounters in the period up to the death of Elizabeth. Voyages of discovery and their accounts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have rarely been considered in the context of periodizing ideas of “medieval” and “early modern.” Though once such voyages are read not with the hindsight of the twenty-first century but from within the tradition of prior travel, the newness of the New World emerges as a modern construct with limited historical purchase. Texts and maps that verbalize voyages beyond the boundaries of what was known are situated as much in individual experience as in collective perspective; they are often more invested in their own reception than in measurable objects and dateable events.
This article examines how English texts register expansive geographical encounters in the period up to the death of Elizabeth. Voyages of discovery and their accounts in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries have rarely been considered in the context of periodizing ideas of “medieval” and “early modern.” Though once such voyages are read not with the hindsight of the twenty-first century but from within the tradition of prior travel, the newness of the New World emerges as a modern construct with limited historical purchase. Texts and maps that verbalize voyages beyond the boundaries of what was known are situated as much in individual experience as in collective perspective; they are often more invested in their own reception than in measurable objects and dateable events.
Research Interests: History, American History, American Studies, Latin Literature, English Literature, and 37 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, Middle English, Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Colonial America, Renaissance, Atlantic World, Medieval English Literature, Tudor England, Drama, English, History of Cartography, History of Canada, Tudor History, Early Modern Literature, Medieval Europe, Medieval England, Early Modern Intellectual History, Renaissance literature, English Renaissance Literature, Elizabethan Literature, Atlantic history, Vikings in the North Atlantic, Tudor Literature, Early Modern Atlantic World (1500-1815), Age of Discovery, Christopher Columbus, Medieval and Renaissance Maps, Discovery of America, St Brendan, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Navigatio sancti Brendani, Richard Hakluyt, John Cabot, and History of Maps and Globes
[Now available through open access from Speculum: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0038713415002316] Among those witnesses of John Gower's works that are known to have been produced during his lifetime, the Trentham... more
[Now available through open access from Speculum: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1017/S0038713415002316]
Among those witnesses of John Gower's works that are known to have been produced during his lifetime, the Trentham manuscript (London, British Library, Additional MS 59495) stands out for its remarkable design as a seemingly planned trilingual collection. The manuscript, usually dated to the first year of Henry IV's reign, exclusively contains Gower's poetry—showcasing his virtuosity in English, French, and Latin. A number of its poems are either addressed to or invoke Henry, yet nothing is known about the history of this manuscript before the seventeenth century. As a result, scholarship on the Trentham manuscript (henceforth Trentham) tends to foreground the question whether this compilation was ever presented to Henry. I will adduce fresh evidence to establish the early provenance of Trentham and show that the manuscript remained in Southwark until the middle of the sixteenth century. Second, I will offer a new context for the composition of Trentham by reading the collection against the background of Anglo-French relations during the first months of Henry's rule. Finally, I will argue for Gower's personal involvement in and continued ownership of this manuscript.
Sebastian Sobecki (2015). Ecce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In Praise of Peace, and John Gower's Autograph Hand. Speculum, 90, pp 925-959. doi: 10.1017/S0038713415002316.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0038713415002316
Among those witnesses of John Gower's works that are known to have been produced during his lifetime, the Trentham manuscript (London, British Library, Additional MS 59495) stands out for its remarkable design as a seemingly planned trilingual collection. The manuscript, usually dated to the first year of Henry IV's reign, exclusively contains Gower's poetry—showcasing his virtuosity in English, French, and Latin. A number of its poems are either addressed to or invoke Henry, yet nothing is known about the history of this manuscript before the seventeenth century. As a result, scholarship on the Trentham manuscript (henceforth Trentham) tends to foreground the question whether this compilation was ever presented to Henry. I will adduce fresh evidence to establish the early provenance of Trentham and show that the manuscript remained in Southwark until the middle of the sixteenth century. Second, I will offer a new context for the composition of Trentham by reading the collection against the background of Anglo-French relations during the first months of Henry's rule. Finally, I will argue for Gower's personal involvement in and continued ownership of this manuscript.
Sebastian Sobecki (2015). Ecce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In Praise of Peace, and John Gower's Autograph Hand. Speculum, 90, pp 925-959. doi: 10.1017/S0038713415002316.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0038713415002316
Research Interests: Christianity, History, Cultural History, Diplomatic History, French Literature, and 78 moreLatin Literature, English Literature, Peace and Conflict Studies, Medieval Literature, Middle English and Middle Scots Literature, Medieval History, Disability Studies, Medieval French Literature, Book History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, History of Blindness/Visual Impairment, Rare Books and Manuscripts, Medieval English Literature, Medieval Latin Literature, Blindness, Authorship Attribution, Politics, English, Manuscript Studies, History Of London, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Paleography, Pacifism, Gower, Medieval England, Medieval France, Book History (History), Literary History, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Codicology of medieval manuscripts, Medieval illuminated manuscripts, The Hundred Years War, Anglo-Norman literature and culture, Middle English literature and culture, Authorship, Palaeography, Medieval Christianity, Disability, Political propaganda and Literature, French, Medieval Latin, Handwriting, London Writing, Christian Pacifism, Latin poetry, Late Medieval History, Manuscripts, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse poetry and prose, Middle Ages, Medieval Latin Poetry, French language and literature of Middle Ages, John Gower, The Hundred Years' War, Scribes, Comparative medieval literature and culture (German, English, Old Norse & Old French), Middle English Literature, Anglo-norman literature and hagiography., Paleography and Codicology, Manuscript studies, codicology, palaeography, medieval paper, Chaucer, circulation of texts and books, history of the book, electronic editing and digital humanities, Southwark, Anglo French Relations, Richard II, Late Medieval French History, Henry IV, Medieval scribes, Middle English texts especially Arthurian Literature, Hundred Years War, Dissolution of Monasteries, Lancastrian France, Lancastrian Political History, King Henry IV of England, Lancastrian Dynasty, House of Lancaster, and Anglo-French Literary Relations
Between 1596 and 1601 John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635) travelled to Germany, Bohemia, Poland–Lithuania, Switzerland, and Italy. His accounts of the Empire and Bohemia are among the most detailed and best informed reports to have... more
Between 1596 and 1601 John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635) travelled to Germany, Bohemia, Poland–Lithuania, Switzerland, and Italy. His accounts of the Empire and Bohemia are among the most detailed and best informed reports to have survived from the period, yet they are virtually unknown to modern scholarship. Furthermore, he was the author of the celebrated description of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, A Relation of the State of Polonia and the United Provinces of that Crown, Anno 1598. Based on new evidence, this article shows that John Peyton's travels in Central Europe formed part of Cecil's attempts to gather intelligence on Spanish diplomatic activity in the Empire and in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. I argue that Peyton was one of many contemporaries who left England on an Elizabethan Grand Tour; a peculiar mixture of visiting European countries for culture, education and intelligence. His writings, however, belong to the more sophisticated written achievements in Elizabethan intelligence gathering.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, British History, and 19 moreLiterature, Tudor England, English, Early Modern England, Early Modern Literature, Intelligence and Espionage, Early Modern Intellectual History, Elizabethan Literature, Poland, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tudor Politics, Early Modern Court Politics, history of Poland, History of Espionage, Grand Tour, Early modern diplomacy, Grand Tour Studies, History of Poland-Lithuania, and Elizabethan Politics
The anonymous A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, Anno 1598 is the most important early account of Poland written in English. Over the last one hundred years, the work has received considerable... more
The anonymous A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, Anno 1598 is the most important early account of Poland written in English. Over the last one hundred years, the work has received considerable attention from British, German, and Polish historians. Two different authors have been proposed, George Carew (c.1556–1612) and William Bruce (c.1560–after 1613), but neither attribution has gone unchallenged. This article is based on a fresh examination of what was long thought to be the only manuscript of this work, British Library Royal MS 18 B I, which makes it possible to determine the date and the circumstances of its production. Following a thorough analysis of the handwriting in the manuscript and the discovery of the watermark, it is now possible to point to the provenance of the manuscript and its components. This new information, in turn, leads to a reassessment of the historical context commonly assigned to A Relation of the State of Polonia. With the help of significant new evidence and formerly overlooked auction catalogues, the author can now be identified as John Peyton (1579–1635). The manuscript itself, I argue, was produced for King James VI and I at the time of his arrival in London in May 1603.
Research Interests: History, Diplomatic History, Eastern European Studies, English Literature, Travel Writing, and 55 moreRenaissance History, Early Modern History, German History, Book History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance, Polish History, Seventeenth Century, Scottish History, English, Central European history, Eastern European history, Manuscript Studies, Early Modern Europe, Paleography, Codicology, Early Modern Literature, History of Political Thought, Intelligence and Espionage, Early Modern Britain, Russian History, Polish Studies, Early Modern Intellectual History, Central European Studies, Travel Literature, Elizabethan Literature, Poland, Palaeography, Early modern Germany, History of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Early Modern Scotland, Lithuanian History, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Central and Eastern Europe, Travel, Ukrainian History, Scotland, Early Modern Bohemia, Anglo-Scottish relations, history of Poland, Espionage, Watermarks, History of Espionage, Grand Tour, Early Modern Travellers, Elizabethan England, Elizabethan and Jacobean England and Europe, History of Muscovy, Sixteenth Century History, Grand Duchy of Lithuania, James VI and I, History of Watermarks, Sixteenth Century Political Thought, and History of Poland-Lithuania
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, German History, and 19 moreBook History, Literature, Polish History, English, Manuscript Studies, Early Modern Europe, Paleography, Diplomacy, Book History (History), Travel Literature, Poland, Palaeography, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Early Modern Manuscripts, Germany, history of Poland, Watermarks, Paper Watermarks, and John Peyton
This is a popular article for 'Mówią Wieki', a leading Polish history monthly, revealing the English spy John Peyton as the author of the 1598/99 work 'A Relation of the State of Polonia'. http://www.mowiawieki.pl/index.php?page=biezacy
Research Interests: History, Diplomatic History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, and 21 moreBritish History, Manuscripts and Early Printed Books, Literature, Renaissance Studies, Polish History, English History, Tudor England, Manuscript Studies, Diplomacy, Intelligence and Espionage, Travel Literature, Early Modern Political Thought, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stuart England, Queen Elizabeth I, King James I, James VI and I, Early Modern Polish History, Union of Poland-Lithuania & Saxony 1697-1763, John Peyton, and Robert Cecil
This article maintains that John Lydgate’s 'Testament' is not a rejection of his secular career but a literary palinode that attempts to impress a sense of coherence onto a diverse body of work. As the language of conversion, the... more
This article maintains that John Lydgate’s 'Testament' is not a rejection of his secular career but a literary palinode that attempts to impress a sense of coherence onto a diverse body of work. As the language of conversion, the repetitive litaneutical code at the end of the poem is vindicated by the earlier performance of poetic bravado. Lydgate’s textual piety, which I show to be indebted to the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, is paradoxically sustained by the displacement of prior secular forms. In a central gesture, the kneeling monk-poet presents his life’s work to God, who acts as his patron. Finally, I demonstrate that manuscript illuminations depicting a kneeling Lydgate confirm the reception of such a pose as simultaneously pious yet secular. As a result, I suggest that we view Lydgate not as a Chaucerian, but first and foremost as a poet dedicated to reconciling the writing of secular literature with a spiritual calling.
From: The Chaucer Review
Volume 49, Number 3, 2015
pp. 265-293
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/chaucer_review/v049/49.3.sobecki.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.49.3.issue-3
From: The Chaucer Review
Volume 49, Number 3, 2015
pp. 265-293
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/chaucer_review/v049/49.3.sobecki.html
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.49.3.issue-3
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Theology, and 36 moreBook History, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, History of Christianity, Liturgy, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, English, Manuscript Studies, Illumination (Manuscripts, Books), Medieval England, Medieval Art, Medieval Literature (English), Lydgate, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jean de Meun, Late Medieval Religion, Monasticism and Devotion, John Lydgate, Gestures, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Literature, Medieval Liturgy, Medieval Devotional Culture, Palinode, Manuscript studies, codicology, palaeography, medieval paper, Chaucer, circulation of texts and books, history of the book, electronic editing and digital humanities, Religious Literature, Holy Name of Jesus, Bury St Edmunds, Vernacular Theology, Illuminated manuscripts, Retraction, and Old and Middle English Literature (Especially Chaucer)
John Rastell was a polymath, a jack‐of‐all‐trades who was a lawyer, printer, playwright, and, eventually, a reformer. He built the first theatre in England and even set sail for the New World (though he only managed to get as far as... more
John Rastell was a polymath, a jack‐of‐all‐trades who was a lawyer, printer, playwright, and, eventually, a reformer. He built the first theatre in England and even set sail for the New World (though he only managed to get as far as Ireland).
Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Translation Studies, Early Modern History, and 11 moreRenaissance Studies, Translation theory, English, Early Modern Literature, Early Modern Intellectual History, Printing History, Anglo-Norman ("Law French"), Common Law, History of the Common Law, John Rastell, and Early Modern Legal History, Law and Literature, Emblem Studies
This chapter shows how a forged charter influenced the afterlife of King Edgar, founded the maritime claims of the British Empire, and shaped the legal status of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Research Interests: American Literature, History, American History, Constitutional Law, English Literature, and 61 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, International Law, Medieval Studies, Colonial America, Maritime History, Legal History, Maritime Law, Medieval English Literature, Seventeenth Century, Nationalism, English, Colonial (American History), Law of the Sea, National Identity, Irish History, British Empire, Medieval England, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), British Imperialism, British and Irish History, Renaissance antiquarianism, History of the British Empire, Samuel Pepys, John Adams, Ius Commune (imperial Common Law), William of Malmesbury, American Constitutional Law, Imperialism, Britishness, US History, Twelfth-century England, John Selden, Seventeenth-Century British History and Culture, Medieval Coinage, Early and Medieval Irish, Irish History, Irish Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval Studies, Celtic Studies, Irish Studies, British Identity, Common Law, Anglo-Saxon charters, Colonial History, Viking Age and Medieval coinage and monetary history, King Edgar, Early American History (colonial, revolutionary, and early republic), Medieval forgeries, Anglo-Irish Relations, Empress Matilda, Oswald of Worcester, Medieval and early modern Dublin, Massachusetts History, History of the Law of the Sea, King Stephen of England, Latin Medieval Documents, American Law, Anglo-Irish History, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Worcester, Mare Liberum /Mare Clausum, and Brexit
The overt mercantilism of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye has overshadowed important questions surrounding the poem’s purpose and literary form. As the work attempts to justify economic protectionism, its preoccupation with legal and... more
The overt mercantilism of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye has overshadowed important questions surrounding the poem’s purpose and literary form. As the work attempts to justify economic protectionism, its preoccupation with legal and bureaucratic practices breaks new ground for the hybrid genre of bill-poems. This article associates The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye with civilian bills, or libelli, and re-evaluates the immediate historical context surrounding the poem’s composition. The wealth and accuracy of economic, political, and legal information that is contained in the poem points to the poet’s intimate familiarity with the highest functions of the King’s writing offices at Westminster. I argue that The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye must have been composed from within the closest circle of Henry VI’s senior administrators. The poem, I shall contend, formed part of the Privy Seal’s strategy to identify the adolescent monarch, who had only just begun to exercise the royal privilege of granting petitions, with a defence of Calais and an ideological pursuit of peace. Central to this process were William Lyndwood, Keeper of the Privy Seal, and Walter Hungerford, the poem’s sponsor. In additionto historical and circumstantial evidence, Lyndwood’s association with The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye is supported by the centrality the poem assigns to seals and documentary validity, its legal mode as a libellus, and its programmatic emphasis on peace and unity, which Lyndwood had championed in a parliamentary sermon of 1431.
Research Interests: History, Economic History, Diplomatic History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 26 moreMedieval History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Late Medieval English History, Diplomacy, High Medieval Ireland, Medieval England, Medieval Canon & Roman Law, The Hundred Years War, Middle English literature and culture, Merchants (Medieval Studies), Medieval Political Thought, Late Medieval History, Old English, Middle English, Old Norse poetry and prose, Fifteenth and Sixteenth century culture, Late Medieval England, Lyndwood, Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, Libel of English Policy, Medieval Economic and Social History, Medieval Law, Medieval Legal History, and Wool Trade
[First published in The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 211 (2002), 329–343] Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's... more
[First published in The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 53, No. 211 (2002), 329–343]
Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance, few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his presentation of the Other is as much a product of his cultural openness as it is the result of a conscious process of careful psychological negotiation of difference in which the text engages with the reader via the medium of the Mandeville persona. The Other is imagined so convincingly by this fourteenth-century writer that he endows it with a complex existence of its own which transcends what Ian Macleod Higgins calls a 'self-critical mirror'. Foucault's notion of 'transgression' proves instrumental in elucidating the way in which Mandeville erects his image of the Other and then, by employing a number of examples, how the text and the language of The Travels convey this 'transgression'. The second aprt of the article evaluates Mandeville's categories of perception by comparing them with the cognitive paradigms expressed by his sources and some of his contemporaries.
Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance, few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his presentation of the Other is as much a product of his cultural openness as it is the result of a conscious process of careful psychological negotiation of difference in which the text engages with the reader via the medium of the Mandeville persona. The Other is imagined so convincingly by this fourteenth-century writer that he endows it with a complex existence of its own which transcends what Ian Macleod Higgins calls a 'self-critical mirror'. Foucault's notion of 'transgression' proves instrumental in elucidating the way in which Mandeville erects his image of the Other and then, by employing a number of examples, how the text and the language of The Travels convey this 'transgression'. The second aprt of the article evaluates Mandeville's categories of perception by comparing them with the cognitive paradigms expressed by his sources and some of his contemporaries.
Research Interests: Christianity, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 22 moreMiddle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Pilgrimage, Medieval English Literature, English, Medieval Church History, Michel Foucault, Islam, Travel Literature, Tolerance, Authorship, Mandeville, Pilgrimage and travel to the Holy Land, Orientalism, Otherness, Sir John Mandeville, Trade and travel in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, Medieval pilgrimage, Mandeville's Travels, Episteme, and Foucault
The exemplum is a short edifying tale that uses a historical person's positive or negative character traits to make a moral point. Its homiletic suitability ensured the genre's widespread use throughout premodern Europe. Not only were... more
The exemplum is a short edifying tale that uses a historical person's positive or negative character traits to make a moral point. Its homiletic suitability ensured the genre's widespread use throughout premodern Europe. Not only were exempla effective preaching instruments on which a travelling friar could rely, but they also were extremely elastic in their application. A closer look at two late thirteenth-century English texts, Ralph Bocking's Latin Life of St Richard of Chichester (Vita sancti Ricardi) and the Life of St Dominic in the anonymous South English Legendary, a Middle English cycle of saints' lives, will explore two original ways in which mendicant hagiographers attempt to conceal and yet betray their intentions through their choice of hagiographic exempla. The first, I argue, petitions the patron, Isabella of Arundel, for a gift to the Order of Preachers, whereas the second text shows evidence of having been composed by a Dominican friar.
Research Interests: Christianity, History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 18 moreMedieval History, Hagiography, Literature, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Critical Thinking, Medieval English Literature, Andragogy, English, Cult of Saints, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Mendicant Orders, Exempla, Liberal Studies, South English Legendary, Dominican Order, and Medieval Religious Practice
For quite some time now, the Old English poem The Seafarer has been interpreted as an account of an early Insular sea pilgrimage, a peregrinatio pro amore Dei. This reading, I argue, rides roughshod over a number of difficulties,... more
For quite some time now, the Old English poem The Seafarer has been interpreted as an account of an early Insular sea pilgrimage, a peregrinatio pro amore Dei. This reading, I argue, rides roughshod over a number of difficulties, including that of the poem’s apparent internal division. A re-examination of this theory shows that such a reading of the The Seafarer also runs counter to pil- grimage patterns identifiable at the time. As an alternative interpretation of the first part of the poem, I propose the possibility that the narrator may have been a fisherman.
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[The attached file is a pre-print version] This essay proposes that Willís view from Kyndeís Mountain in Piers Plowman B XI is a sapiential vision in the Augustinian sense, dependent on and conditioned by the topographical... more
[The attached file is a pre-print version]
This essay proposes that Willís view from Kyndeís Mountain in Piers Plowman B XI is a sapiential vision in the Augustinian sense, dependent on and conditioned by the topographical circumstances in which it is experienced. In the case of Willís survey of Middle Earth, an elevation is required to attain exposure to wisdom and the mediatory manner in which it is attained determines the mode of representation. Besides strengthening those approaches that seek to establish an Augustinian and, to some extent, anti-intellectual context for the work, this reading explains the central importance of the mountain vista to the trajectory of the poem whilst lending additional support to the central role of Passus XI in the context of the whole work, especially since this Passus closes the A-Text in a number of versions.
This essay proposes that Willís view from Kyndeís Mountain in Piers Plowman B XI is a sapiential vision in the Augustinian sense, dependent on and conditioned by the topographical circumstances in which it is experienced. In the case of Willís survey of Middle Earth, an elevation is required to attain exposure to wisdom and the mediatory manner in which it is attained determines the mode of representation. Besides strengthening those approaches that seek to establish an Augustinian and, to some extent, anti-intellectual context for the work, this reading explains the central importance of the mountain vista to the trajectory of the poem whilst lending additional support to the central role of Passus XI in the context of the whole work, especially since this Passus closes the A-Text in a number of versions.
Research Interests: Christianity, History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 14 moreMedieval History, Hagiography, Literature, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Medieval Theology, English, Cult of Saints, Medieval Church History, Augustine, Medieval England, Augustine of Hippo, Middle English literature and culture, and Piers Plowman
Gower’s treatment of the incest motif in the “Tale of Apollonius” in Book VIII of the Confessio Amantis is embedded into the poet’s discussion of king- ship, which, like incest, emerges as being subject to legal discourses. Read... more
Gower’s treatment of the incest motif in the “Tale of Apollonius” in Book VIII of the Confessio Amantis is embedded into the poet’s discussion of king- ship, which, like incest, emerges as being subject to legal discourses. Read political- ly, the portrayal of Apollonius would appear to sustain a host of often discordant voices, many of which articulate the text’s desire to represent Richard II: there is the ideal monarch, the flawed ruler, and the maturing hero. A balanced reading favours Apollonius as a narrative device oscillating between the functions of giving advice to a prince and issuing “constructive criticism” to a tyrant. The antidote to bad king- ship and incest is administered in the form of good governance and marriage, two concepts that were undergoing radical reform at the time, namely the introduction of consent as their foundation. I will argue, therefore, that the successful integration of political and marital consent as a condition for good rule lies at the heart of Gow- er’s advice to the inexperienced monarch.1
Research Interests: History, Cultural Studies, Psychology, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 24 moreMedieval History, Literature, Narrative, Medieval Studies, Rape, English, Late Medieval English History, Literary Theory, Women, Feminism, Gower, Middle English literature and culture, Marriage (History), Trauma, Myth, Holocaust, Memory, John Gower, Incest in myth, Incest, Apollonius of Tyre, Confessio Amantis, Richard II, and Personal Narratives
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The thirteenth-century poem King Horn is widely regarded as the first Middle English romance. Consequently, a disproportional amount of attention has been paid to the work's genre and linguistic features, often at the expense of more... more
The thirteenth-century poem King Horn is widely regarded as the first Middle English romance. Consequently, a disproportional amount of attention has been paid to the work's genre and linguistic features, often at the expense of more complex interpretative concerns. One such aspect of the poem is the structural negotiation of the conflict between Saracens and the londisse men allied to the protagonist. This clash permeates the work and pits the land against the sea, elevating the shore to a defining role.
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Research Interests: Christianity, English Literature, Translation Studies, Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, and 24 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, Medieval Studies, English language, Old English Literature, Medieval English Literature, Early Christianity, English, Biblical Studies, Early Medieval Archaeology, Early Medieval History, Medieval England, History of English Language, Old English Language, Old English Language and Literature, English linguistics, Fishing, Old English, History of the English Language, Aelfric, Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, and Archaeology of fishing
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Petrarch’s Ascent of Mount Ventoux have both been held up as marking pivotal stages in the development of naturalism in landscape descriptions. This article attempts to gauge to what extent... more
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Petrarch’s Ascent of Mount Ventoux have both been held up as marking pivotal stages in the development of naturalism in landscape descriptions. This article attempts to gauge to what extent non-referentiality (both in figurative and formalistic terms) is sustainable in representations of landscapes in these two late-medieval texts. On close inspection, the portrayal of landscape in these two works suggests that proto-modernity has little purchase on their topographic verisimilitude, which functions not so much as a harbinger of proto-modernity but as a naturalistic signifier operative in conventional figural situations.
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I have since identified the author as John Peyton; see Sebastian Sobecki, 'John Peyton's A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I, 1598-1603. The English Historical Review, 129: 540 (2014), 1079-97.... more
I have since identified the author as John Peyton; see Sebastian Sobecki, 'John Peyton's A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I, 1598-1603. The English Historical Review, 129: 540 (2014), 1079-97. http://ehr.oxfordjournals.org/content/129/540/1079
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Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 20 moreChaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Medieval Church History, Suicide, Gower, Medieval Canon & Roman Law, Suicide in Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Geoffrey Chaucer, Medieval Canon Law, Dido, John Gower, Lovesickness, Confessio Amantis, Legend of Good Women, and Old and Middle English Literature (Especially Chaucer)
Benedeit's poem Le Voyage de Saint Brendan is not a mere adaptation of the popular Latin Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. By comparing Benedeit's creative use of the sea- and pilgrimage-motives, it appears that the Anglo-Norman poem is... more
Benedeit's poem Le Voyage de Saint Brendan is not a mere adaptation of the popular Latin Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis. By comparing Benedeit's creative use of the sea- and pilgrimage-motives, it appears that the Anglo-Norman poem is in many aspects closer to the Irish immrama than to its presumed source, the Latin Navigatio. As a result, both the relationship between the two Brendan-voyages as well as the alleged dependence of the immrama on the Latin Navigatio are challenged.
Research Interests: Christianity, French Literature, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 22 moreMedieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval Latin Literature, Early Christianity, English, Early Medieval Ireland, Old Irish Language and Literature, Monasticism, Old French, Medieval Romance, Celtic Languages, Early Christian Ireland, Old French Romance, St Brendan, Immrama, Old and Middle Irish Literature, Early Irish Poets, Early Irish Politics, Pre historic Europe, Roman Britain and Gaul, and Late Medieval Irish Society
Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance, few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his... more
Although the sympathetic depiction of Otherness in The Travels of Sir John Mandeville is acknowledged to be indicative of the writer's celebrated tolerance, few critics have ventured to explore how Mandeville creates it. Yet his presentation of the Other is as much a product of his cultural openness as it is the result of a conscious process of careful psychological negotiation of difference in which the text engages with the reader via the medium of the Mandeville persona. The Other is imagined so convincingly by this fourteenth-century writer that he endows it with a complex existence of its own which transcends what Ian Macleod Higgins calls a 'self-critical mirror'. Foucault's notion of 'transgression' proves instrumental in elucidating the way in which Mandeville erects his image of the Other and then, by employing a number of examples, how the text and the language of The Travels convey this 'transgression'. The second aprt of the article evaluates Mandeville's categories of perception by comparing them with the cognitive paradigms expressed by his sources and some of his contemporaries.
Research Interests: Christianity, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 19 moreMedieval French Literature, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Late Medieval English History, Michel Foucault, Medieval England, Islam, Medieval Culture, Travel Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Mandeville, Orientalism, Travel, Sir John Mandeville, Mandeville's Travels, and Foucault
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Peyton, Sir John (1579–1635), soldier, spy, and administrator, was probably born at Beaupré Hall in Outwell, Norfolk, in 1579, the only son of Sir John Peyton (1544–1630), soldier and administrator, of Doddington, Cambridgeshire, and his... more
Peyton, Sir John (1579–1635), soldier, spy, and administrator, was probably born at Beaupré Hall in Outwell, Norfolk, in 1579, the only son of Sir John Peyton (1544–1630), soldier and administrator, of Doddington, Cambridgeshire, and his wife, Dorothy, née Beaupré (d.1603), widow of Sir Robert Bell. He was admitted as fellow commoner of Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1594. At Queens' he was an exact contemporary of the poet and later traveller John Weever and there he may have met Nathanial Fletcher, elder brother of the future playwright John Fletcher. Peyton must have acquired excellent Latin, and his later writings certainly exhibit some knowledge of German and Italian.
In 1596 Peyton left on a confidential mission for Germany and Bohemia, reaching Poland in spring 1598. His task was to gather detailed information on Spanish activities in the Holy Roman empire and in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, and his mission appears to have been arranged and at least partly financed by Robert Cecil, who had recently been appointed secretary of state. From Poland, Peyton travelled to Padua, then to Basel, where he was in November 1599, before returning to Italy. Writing to his father from Basel, Peyton complained about his life as a spy: ‘it being … dangerous for a man to bee noted of curious enquiry’ (CUL, MS Kk.5.2., fols. 2r–v). He returned to England between 1601 and November 1602 at the latest.
In 1596 Peyton left on a confidential mission for Germany and Bohemia, reaching Poland in spring 1598. His task was to gather detailed information on Spanish activities in the Holy Roman empire and in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, and his mission appears to have been arranged and at least partly financed by Robert Cecil, who had recently been appointed secretary of state. From Poland, Peyton travelled to Padua, then to Basel, where he was in November 1599, before returning to Italy. Writing to his father from Basel, Peyton complained about his life as a spy: ‘it being … dangerous for a man to bee noted of curious enquiry’ (CUL, MS Kk.5.2., fols. 2r–v). He returned to England between 1601 and November 1602 at the latest.
Research Interests: History, European History, German History, Czech History, British History, and 15 morePolish History, English History, Tudor England, Early Modern England, Intelligence and Espionage, Early Modern Britain, Early modern Germany, History of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Tudor/Stuart Britain, Stuart England, Early Modern Bohemia, history of Poland, History of Espionage, and Early modern Poland
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 10 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Late Medieval Religion, Monasticism and Devotion, Medieval Chronicles, Chronicles, and John Capgrave
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 11 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Christian Mysticism, Medieval Theology, Medieval English Literature, Mysticism, Medieval Church History, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Mysticism, and Richard Rolle
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Research Interests: History, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Medieval Church History, Early Medieval Ireland, and 11 moreChurch History, Monasticism, Celtic Languages, Early Medieval Monasticism, Early Christian Ireland, Old and Middle Irish Literature, Early Irish Poets, Early Irish Politics, Pre historic Europe, Roman Britain and Gaul, and Late Medieval Irish Society
Peter of Dacia, O.P., Prior of St Nicholas, Visby, Gotland, born c. 1235, died 1289
Alternative names: Petrus Daciensis, Petrus Gutensis, Petrus (de Dacia) Gothensis
Alternative names: Petrus Daciensis, Petrus Gutensis, Petrus (de Dacia) Gothensis
Research Interests: History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Hagiography, Medieval German Literature, and 10 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Cult of Saints, Mysticism, Medieval Scandinavia, History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Medieval Mysticism, Medieval Germany, History of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), and Christina Von Stommeln
Jędrzej Gałka of Dobczyn, master at the University of Cracow, born c. 1400, died after 1451
Alternative names: Andrzej (Andrew)
Alternative names: Andrzej (Andrew)
Research Interests: History, Medieval Literature, Theology, Medieval History, Literature, and 13 moreMedieval Studies, Polish History, Reformation History, Reformation Studies, Medieval Church History, John Wyclif, Polish Literature, Lollards, Old Polish literature, Medieval Poland, Cracow, Lollardy, and Polish Reformation
The Sea Defined by Isidore of Seville as the “general gathering of waters”, the term “sea” (“mare”, “pelagius”, “aquae”) was mainly applied to the following known bodies of water: the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the... more
The Sea
Defined by Isidore of Seville as the “general gathering of waters”, the term “sea” (“mare”, “pelagius”, “aquae”) was mainly applied to the following known bodies of water: the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, which constituted the only known part of the imagined world-encircling ocean. Other imagined seas were also thought to exist, such as the Libersee (“mare coagulatum”) which marks the northernmost boundary of the North Sea. Besides its exploitation for purposes of commerce, fishing, travel, and warfare (link: seafaring), the sea received considerable attention in the culture and literature of the Middle Ages. Although symbolic uses of the sea are a common feature of medieval art (Jonah and the Whale, the Flood, St Nicholas), it is the literature of the period that has generated the most inventive uses of sea motives.
Defined by Isidore of Seville as the “general gathering of waters”, the term “sea” (“mare”, “pelagius”, “aquae”) was mainly applied to the following known bodies of water: the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the Norwegian Sea, the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean, which constituted the only known part of the imagined world-encircling ocean. Other imagined seas were also thought to exist, such as the Libersee (“mare coagulatum”) which marks the northernmost boundary of the North Sea. Besides its exploitation for purposes of commerce, fishing, travel, and warfare (link: seafaring), the sea received considerable attention in the culture and literature of the Middle Ages. Although symbolic uses of the sea are a common feature of medieval art (Jonah and the Whale, the Flood, St Nicholas), it is the literature of the period that has generated the most inventive uses of sea motives.
Research Interests: History, Classics, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval German Literature, and 18 moreMedieval French Literature, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Maritime History, Medieval English Literature, Medieval Latin Literature, Medieval Drama, History of Religion (Medieval Studies), Medieval Italian Literature, Medieval Literature (English), English (Medieval Studies), Bible, Maritime and Oceanic History, Maritime, Early Church Fathers, Sir John Mandeville, and Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
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Susannah Mary Chewning, ed., Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager; Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds., John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
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Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde have expertly assembled this festschrift for Ralph Hanna on occasion of his retirement as Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford. The twelve essays collected in this volume cover a good range... more
Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde have expertly assembled this festschrift for Ralph Hanna on occasion of his retirement as Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford. The twelve essays collected in this volume cover a good range of Hanna’s own academic interests, from manuscript studies over regional literature to alliterative poetry.
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A review of Marion Turner's Chaucer: A European Life
Research Interests: European History, European Studies, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreChaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Medieval English Literature, Literary Theory, Biography, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Literary biography, Geoffrey Chaucer, Middle English Literature, and Late Medieval England
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Research Interests: History, Law, Constitutional Law, British History, Legal History, and 20 moreBritish Politics, English History, Legal Theory, Seventeenth Century, English, European Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, English law, Constitutionalism, Constitutional History, Legal, Seventeenth-Century British History and Culture, Common Law, Sixteenth Century History, Edward Coke, legal theory and philosophy of State and Law, English Common Law, British Constitutional Law, Constitutional Law Theory, and Legal Theory and History
Research Interests: French Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval French Literature, and 11 moreMiddle English, Legal History, Medieval English Literature, English, Old French, Middle English literature and culture, English law, English Legal system, John Gower, Anglo-Norman ("Law French"), and Common Law
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Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Literature, and 17 moreRenaissance Studies, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, Tudor England, English, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Early Modern Literature, Renaissance drama, Medieval England, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, Middle English literature and culture, Tudor Literature, Early Tudor Literature, English language and literature, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
Research Interests: History, Economic History, Admiralty Law, Medieval History, German History, and 29 moreInternational Law, Medieval Studies, Maritime History, Polish History, Maritime Law, English History, Scottish History, Late Medieval English History, Law of the Sea, Shipping, Customary Law, Medieval England, History of Estonia, Dutch History, Maritime, Seafarers, Estonia, Prussian History, International Customs Law, Hanseatic League, Medieval Economic and Social History, Admiralty/Marine/Maritime/Merchant Shipping and Port Law, Law of the Sea/Maritime Law, Admiralty and maritime law, Aberdeen, Tallinn, Lübeck, Reval, and History of City Gdansk
Research Interests: Diachronic Linguistics (Or Historical Linguistics), Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 14 moreGermanic linguistics, English language, Medieval Scandinavia, Old Norse Language, Scandinavian languages, Old Germanic Languages, Linguistics, English historical linguistics, Orkney and Shetland studies, Scandinavian Studies, Old English Language, Viking Age Scandinavia, Scandianvian Archaeology, and Old English, Middle English, and Old Norse Languages, Literature, and Culture
Research Interests: History, Military History, Medieval History, Italian Studies, Medieval Studies, and 21 moreMaritime History, Medieval Islam, Mediterranean Studies, Mediterranean, Medieval Europe, History of the Mediterranean, Medieval Italy, Norman Sicily, Mediterranean and North Africa, Normans, Italy, Islamic and Norman Sicily, Seafarers, Port cities, Anglo-Norman history, Sicily, Islands, Insularity, Ports, Normans in Southern Italy, and Trade Routes
Research Interests: History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 15 moreLiterature, Medieval Studies, Island Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Early Modern Literature, Medieval England, Englishness, Andrew Marvell, Gildas, Piers Plowman, Islands, and Insularity
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Research Interests: Christianity, History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Early Modern History, and 15 moreLiterature, History of Christianity, Renaissance Studies, Renaissance Humanism, Reformation Studies, English, Early Modern England, Early Modern Europe, Catholic Theology, History of Roman Catholicism, Early Modern Literature, Humanism, Early Modern Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, and English language and literature
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The 1873 discovery of a quitclaim [deed of release] by Cecily Chaumpaigne, in which she formally renounced her right to sue Geoffrey Chaucer from any action arising from de raptu meo, fostered the belief that Chaucer may have committed a... more
The 1873 discovery of a quitclaim [deed of release] by Cecily Chaumpaigne, in which she formally renounced her right to sue Geoffrey Chaucer from any action arising from de raptu meo, fostered the belief that Chaucer may have committed a serious crime. Uncertainty about how exactly to interpret the quitclaim springs from the ambiguity of the term raptus (which translates to "seizure"), used in both rape and ravishment (abduction) suits. What events had led up to this quitclaim? Our new discovery of two previously unknown legal records, presented at a public event in October 2022, transforms our knowledge of the relationship between Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne. The two documents we introduced show that a third known life-record was also linked to the same dispute. The surviving records refute the long-held hypothesis that Chaucer may have raped Chaumpaigne; instead, the new records establish that Chaucer and Chaumpaigne were not opponents but belonged to the same party in a legal dispute with Chaumpaigne's former employer, Thomas Staundon, who had sued them both under the Statute of Laborers (1349). Chaumpaigne's quitclaims offered the most expedient legal path under the Statute of Laborers for both Chaucer and Chaumpaigne to demonstrate that she had left her employment with Staundon voluntarily, as opposed to being coerced or abducted, before commencing work for Chaucer.
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The Latin narrative of Saewulf’s voyage to the Holy Land in 1102 is so significant because his account of Jerusalem is one of the first to have reached us after the city’s conquest in 1099 during the First Crusade.
Research Interests: Religion, Christianity, History, Cartography, Medieval Literature, and 15 moreMedieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, Crusades, Pilgrimage, History of Cartography, Mediterranean Studies, History of Crusades, History of the Mediterranean, Islam, Historical maps, Pilgrimage and travel to the Holy Land, Jerusalem, CRUSADER KINGDOM OF JERUSALEM, and Englihs Literature
Brief thoughts on the cover of the December 2016 issue of "postmedieval"
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This post is based on my research on medieval and early modern travel writing and on his identification of John Peyton’s authorship, first published as ‘John Peyton’s A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I,... more
This post is based on my research on medieval and early modern travel writing and on his identification of John Peyton’s authorship, first published as ‘John Peyton’s A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I, 1598–1603’ in the English Historical Review.
Research Interests: History, Russian Studies, English Literature, Travel Writing, British History, and 27 moreManuscripts and Early Printed Books, Literature, Belarusian Studies, Polish History, English History, Tudor England, Manuscript Studies, Codicology, Intelligence and Espionage, Russian History, Polish Studies, Travel Literature, Elizabethan Literature, Poland, Palaeography, History of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Lithuanian History, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Early Modern Manuscripts, Russia, Ukrainian History, Stuart England, Estonia, Latvia, History of Espionage, Lithuania, and History of Muscovy
An account of finding the Margery Kempe letter in Gdańsk.
Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval History, and 16 moreMiddle English, Women's writing, Christian Mysticism, Medieval English Literature, English, Manuscript Studies, Autobiography, Mysticism, Medieval England, Medieval Literature (English), Margery Kempe, Poland, Palaeography, Medieval Mysticism, East Anglia, and History of City Gdansk
[A link to the video recording of the lecture is included in the PDF.] This year, we at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent are delighted to welcome Professor Sebastian Sobecki (University of... more
[A link to the video recording of the lecture is included in the PDF.]
This year, we at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent are delighted to welcome Professor Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen) to present 'Inner Circles: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval London'.
The explosive growth of Europe’s literary culture in the 14th and 15th centuries was unprecedented as an urban phenomenon. The concentration of aristocratic tastes, mercantile capital, and political power and the presence of civic, ducal, royal, or imperial chanceries accelerated the development of literary production in Europe’s cities, including Budapest, Cologne, Cracow, London, Naples, Paris, and Prague. Cities began to emerge as literary centres, and clerks and commercial scribes played a central role in this cultural shift.
New findings reveal that London's clerks and scriveners, who moved between English, French, and Latin, formed professional ‘communities of practice’, which played a significant part in the dissemination of literary manuscripts. These findings are transforming our knowledge of the contexts of English literary culture, book production, and ideas of authorship.
Were London’s civic, national, and commercial administrative centres involved in the production of literary manuscripts? Which of its urban settings or institutions can be identified as hubs of literary activity? Can comprehensive empirical analysis of the capital’s scribal output reveal the extent to which bureaucratic, commercial, and ecclesiastical scribes shaped England’s intellectual culture and the tastes of a reading public in the city and the country’s regions?
This year, we at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) at the University of Kent are delighted to welcome Professor Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen) to present 'Inner Circles: Reading and Writing in Late Medieval London'.
The explosive growth of Europe’s literary culture in the 14th and 15th centuries was unprecedented as an urban phenomenon. The concentration of aristocratic tastes, mercantile capital, and political power and the presence of civic, ducal, royal, or imperial chanceries accelerated the development of literary production in Europe’s cities, including Budapest, Cologne, Cracow, London, Naples, Paris, and Prague. Cities began to emerge as literary centres, and clerks and commercial scribes played a central role in this cultural shift.
New findings reveal that London's clerks and scriveners, who moved between English, French, and Latin, formed professional ‘communities of practice’, which played a significant part in the dissemination of literary manuscripts. These findings are transforming our knowledge of the contexts of English literary culture, book production, and ideas of authorship.
Were London’s civic, national, and commercial administrative centres involved in the production of literary manuscripts? Which of its urban settings or institutions can be identified as hubs of literary activity? Can comprehensive empirical analysis of the capital’s scribal output reveal the extent to which bureaucratic, commercial, and ecclesiastical scribes shaped England’s intellectual culture and the tastes of a reading public in the city and the country’s regions?
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This is a recording of John Skelton's 'Lawde and Prayse'. It was made by the Skelton Project (www.skeltonproject.org) and features my voice.
Research Interests: English Literature, Digital Humanities, Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Middle English, and 12 moreMedieval Studies, Poetry, English language, Tudor England, English, Early Modern Literature, John Skelton, Early Modern English Language, Tudor Literature, Henry VIII, Early Modern English Literature and Drama, and The Skelton Project
My recording of John Skelton's 'Speke Parrot' for The Skelton Project (http://www.skeltonproject.org) Although this is an early sixteenth-century poem, I have tried to read it with a mid-fifteenth-century pronunciation, knowing that John... more
My recording of John Skelton's 'Speke Parrot' for The Skelton Project (http://www.skeltonproject.org)
Although this is an early sixteenth-century poem, I have tried to read it with a mid-fifteenth-century pronunciation, knowing that John Skelton was in his late 50s at the time. I read the Latin as I believed it would have been pronounced by a fifteenth-century Englishman. As far as possible, I have tried to present the other languages used in this poem (Middle French, Italian, Castilian, Low German, Flemish, Welsh etc.) in their contemporary form.
The recording has received almost a million views on YouTube and was featured in a BBC article.
Although this is an early sixteenth-century poem, I have tried to read it with a mid-fifteenth-century pronunciation, knowing that John Skelton was in his late 50s at the time. I read the Latin as I believed it would have been pronounced by a fifteenth-century Englishman. As far as possible, I have tried to present the other languages used in this poem (Middle French, Italian, Castilian, Low German, Flemish, Welsh etc.) in their contemporary form.
The recording has received almost a million views on YouTube and was featured in a BBC article.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Languages and Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, and 22 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, Multilingualism, Middle English, Medieval Studies, Poetry, English language, Medieval English Literature, Tudor England, English, History of English Literature, John Skelton, Medieval parody and satire, History of English Language, Middle English literature and culture, Tudor Literature, Early Tudor Literature, Satire & Irony, English language and literature, Satire, History of the English Language, and Old and Middle English language
That European libraries often hold important manuscripts of late medieval English texts is well known: there is a copy of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes in Leiden, and manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales have survived in Paris and Geneva.... more
That European libraries often hold important manuscripts of late medieval English texts is well known: there is a copy of Lydgate’s Fall of Princes in Leiden, and manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales have survived in Paris and Geneva. However, we rarely mine other repositories for evidence, particularly beyond the ‘traditional’ areas for Chaucer and Middle English studies such as France or Italy. As my discovery of John Kempe’s 1431 letter in Gdańsk shows, overlooked archives can be rewarding. Such repositories need not be obvious or particularly visible; many are regional, provincial, or municipal. In my paper, I will concentrate on minute books, letters, bookkeeping documents, charters, and custom and toll registers in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Lithuania, in an attempt to open up new avenues for future research.
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This was a plenary lecture given at the Aberystwyth and Bangor Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) Conference, ‘Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern Period’, in Bangor.
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The authorship of The Book of Margery Kempe has been the subject of much debate ever since the sole manuscript copy of the text was identified by Hope Emily Allen in 1934. My paper presents two pieces of new evidence relating to Margery... more
The authorship of The Book of Margery Kempe has been the subject of much debate ever since the sole manuscript copy of the text was identified by Hope Emily Allen in 1934. My paper presents two pieces of new evidence relating to Margery Kempe’s son and to Robert Spryngolde, her confessor. The first item, a letter prepared for her son in Danzig (modern Gdańsk) in 1431, discloses the son’s name and the reasons for his journey to Lynn. This information, in turn, sheds new light on the account of The Book’s production as given in the Proem. As a result, the discovery of the letter corroborates the theory that the son was Kempe’s first scribe. A second previously unknown document shows the extent of Robert Spryngolde’s ties to Margery Kempe’s family, strengthening his role as the clerical scribe behind much of The Book. Both findings help to anchor the supposedly autobiographical narrative in its immediate historical situation, thereby strengthening the historicity of the work. Finally, I offer a revised explanation for the collaborative model behind the production of this text.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Women's writing, and 12 moreLiterature, Medieval English Literature, English, Manuscript Studies, Autobiography, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Medieval England, Margery Kempe, Authorship, Palaeography, and The Book of Margery Kempe
Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Berlin 2015
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Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 13 moreChaucer, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Illustration, English, Manuscript Studies, Lydgate, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Late Medieval Religion, Monasticism and Devotion, Religious Studies, Palinode, and Holy Name of Jesus
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This paper was given as a talk in Bochum in 2005. It has since been revised and published in The Sea and Medieval English Literature (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 140-60.
Research Interests: History, Law, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 12 moreLiterature, International Law, Maritime Law, Medieval English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Law of the Sea, Middle English literature and culture, Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, Law of the Sea/Maritime Law, Medieval Law, History of the Law of the Sea, and International Law of the Sea
This is the draft outline/syllabus for a course in the MA in English Literature at the University of Groningen.
Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Teaching and Learning, Education, and 28 moreMedieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, History of Christianity, Medieval Studies, Religion and Politics, Revolutions, Medieval English Literature, English History, Tudor England, Politics, History of English Literature, Late Medieval English History, Medieval Church History, Tudor History, Medieval England, Medieval Literature (English), Middle English literature and culture, England, English language and literature, Rebellion, Middle Ages, Piers Plowman, Medieval English History, Teaching of English Language and Literature, Peasants Revolt, and 1381 Revolt
As offered in 2014-15. This course will explore the later premodern city (and London in particular) both as a context for literary production and as the subject of literary reflection. Urban synergy – the idea that the city amounts to... more
As offered in 2014-15. This course will explore the later premodern city (and London in particular) both as a context for literary production and as the subject of literary reflection. Urban synergy – the idea that the city amounts to more than the sum of its parts – and its relationship to individuals and polities will inform our reading of selected texts by Chaucer, Hoccleve, Ashby, More, and Skelton. As we encounter embodiments of the city as a royal bride, as polis, as New Troy, or as a utopia, we will examine how premodern writers negotiate such ‘urban’ concepts as free speech, public/private space, and the political meaning of the city.
For last year's essay exam questions, see below.
For last year's essay exam questions, see below.
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This is the 2016/17 re-sit exam
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This is the syllabus for a third-year BA course. During the fifteenth century, England was in the hands of two northern dynasties, the houses of Lancaster and York. The Lancastrians dominated much of that period, whereas the violent... more
This is the syllabus for a third-year BA course.
During the fifteenth century, England was in the hands of two northern dynasties, the houses of Lancaster and York. The Lancastrians dominated much of that period, whereas the violent conflict between these two dynasties in the latter part of the century led to a period of instability and upheaval, now dubbed the Wars of the Roses.
This course will explore the literary and political writings produced for Lancastrian and Yorkist rulers during the fifteenth century. We will see how poets and writers such as John Gower, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, George Ashby, and Sir John Fortescue seek to intervene in political affairs.
During the fifteenth century, England was in the hands of two northern dynasties, the houses of Lancaster and York. The Lancastrians dominated much of that period, whereas the violent conflict between these two dynasties in the latter part of the century led to a period of instability and upheaval, now dubbed the Wars of the Roses.
This course will explore the literary and political writings produced for Lancastrian and Yorkist rulers during the fifteenth century. We will see how poets and writers such as John Gower, Thomas Hoccleve, John Lydgate, George Ashby, and Sir John Fortescue seek to intervene in political affairs.
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This is the 2016-17 exam for the BA Chaucer survey
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This is the course outline/syllabus for our compulsory first-year Chaucer survey. Geoffrey Chaucer is the most widely studied medieval English writer. His works, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, reflect and... more
This is the course outline/syllabus for our compulsory first-year Chaucer survey.
Geoffrey Chaucer is the most widely studied medieval English writer. His works, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, reflect and inflect existing English and European literary traditions. French, Italian, and classical influences shimmer through Chaucer’s poems, which engage with an almost encyclopaedic range of topics and interests. Chaucer’s own life is exceptionally well-documented, and his many public roles and jobs offer a window on the social, political, and literary culture of late-medieval London, England, and Europe.
Geoffrey Chaucer is the most widely studied medieval English writer. His works, composed in the second half of the fourteenth century, reflect and inflect existing English and European literary traditions. French, Italian, and classical influences shimmer through Chaucer’s poems, which engage with an almost encyclopaedic range of topics and interests. Chaucer’s own life is exceptionally well-documented, and his many public roles and jobs offer a window on the social, political, and literary culture of late-medieval London, England, and Europe.
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Course description: More than any other secular variety of premodern writing, romances connect the literature of the Middle Ages with that of both earlier and later periods. They blend Classical myth with Celtic mystique, and oriental... more
Course description: More than any other secular variety of premodern writing, romances connect the literature of the Middle Ages with that of both earlier and later periods. They blend Classical myth with Celtic mystique, and oriental exotica with local concerns. Romances tell stories about King Arthur and his court, the crusades, and ancient English princes, many of which recur in the works of Shakespeare, Tennyson, or Eliot. In this course we will explore the romance tradition in England, with special attention to the origin and development of the Arthurian canon, the political meaning of Englishness and Britishness, the self-examination of courtly ethics and gender relations, and the ideological origins of the British Empire. The course will not only examine the aristocratic culture of medieval England but will also demonstrate how premodern writings inform the literature of later periods.
Research Interests: History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 25 moreMedieval French Literature, Middle English, Literature, Medieval English Literature, Arthurian Studies, Medieval Latin Literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Political History, British Empire, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Empire, History of the British Empire, Medieval Romance, Imperialism, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Middle English Romances, Arthurian Romances, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Wace, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Medieval Britain, Havelok the Dane, Middle English, and Layamon
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2015-2016. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.
Research Interests: History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Middle English and Middle Scots Literature, Medieval History, and 26 moreBritish History, Medieval French Literature, Middle English, Literature, Medieval English Literature, Arthurian Studies, Medieval Latin Literature, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Political History, British Empire, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, Empire, History of the British Empire, Medieval Romance, Imperialism, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Middle English Romances, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Wace, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Medieval Britain, Middle English texts especially Arthurian Literature, Havelok the Dane, Middle English, and Layamon
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2014-2015. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 22 moreMedieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Arthurian Studies, English, British Empire, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie De France, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Malory, Wace, King horn, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Layamon, Matter of Britain, Sir Thomas Malory, and Matter of England
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2014-2015. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 24 moreMedieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Arthurian Studies, English, Geoffrey of Monmouth, British Empire, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie De France, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Malory, Wace, King horn, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Layamon, Matter of Britain, Sir Thomas Malory, and Matter of England
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2013-2014. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 24 moreMedieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Arthurian Studies, English, Geoffrey of Monmouth, British Empire, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie De France, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Malory, Wace, King horn, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Layamon, Matter of Britain, Sir Thomas Malory, and Matter of England
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2013-2014. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 24 moreMedieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Arthurian Studies, English, Geoffrey of Monmouth, British Empire, Middle English literature and culture, Medieval Romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie De France, Thomas Malory, king Arthur, Malory, Wace, King horn, Alliterative Morte Arthure, Layamon, Matter of Britain, Sir Thomas Malory, and Matter of England
This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2010-11. The course focuses on Old and Middle English religious writings.
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This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2010-11. The course focuses on Old and Middle English religious writings.
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As taught in 2014-15. In this course, students become acquainted with a selection of representative vernacular medieval and Tudor texts written in England. Particular attention is paid to external political and cultural influences, such... more
As taught in 2014-15. In this course, students become acquainted with a selection of representative vernacular medieval and Tudor texts written in England. Particular attention is paid to external political and cultural influences, such as the coming of the Anglo-Saxons to Britain, the Christianisation of the island, the Norman Conquest, language politics, and cultural translation.
Past exams are given below.
Past exams are given below.
Research Interests: English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, and 15 moreMedieval Studies, Old English Literature, Medieval English Literature, Medieval Drama, Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, Thomas Hoccleve, Old English Language and Literature, Sir John Mandeville, Sir Orfeo, Canterbury Tales, Caedmon's Hymn, Old English Elegies, Dream of the Rood, and Alfred the Great
Article in The Guardian (7 June 2019) by Alison Flood on my find of a new Chaucer life-record
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, and 11 moreMiddle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Archives, Late Medieval English History, Biography, Medieval Literature (English), Middle English literature and culture, and Geoffrey Chaucer
This is a Dutch-language interview with me and the Belgian novelist and playwright Tom Lanoye about his adaptation of Marlowe's "Edward II".
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Theatre Studies, Literature, Renaissance Studies, and 19 moreEnglish History, Drama, Modernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Modern Drama, Early Modern Literature, Renaissance literature, Early Modern English drama, English Renaissance Literature, Christopher Marlowe, Dutch Literature, Early Modern Drama, Modern Dutch Literature, Belgian Literature, English Renaissance Drama, Elizabethan drama, Edward II, Historical Literature, Modern European Drama and Theatre, and Early Modern English Literature and Drama
This is an article, written by Medievalists.net, with an interview on my discovery of the early provenance of the Trentham manuscript and Gower's autograph hand.
Research Interests: English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Disability Studies, Medieval French Literature, and 29 moreBook History, Middle English, History of the Book, Medieval Studies, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, Medieval Latin Literature, Blindness, English, Manuscript Studies, History Of London, Late Medieval English History, Paleography, Codicology, Medieval England, Medieval France, Book History (History), Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Codicology of medieval manuscripts, The Hundred Years War, Middle English literature and culture, Palaeography, London, John Gower, Southwark, Late Medieval England, Richard II, Henry IV, and Lancastrian Political History
Brief post by the The Independent on the 'Speke, Parott' video
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Article by The Guardian's Alison Flood on my discovery of the John Kempe letter
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 14 moreMiddle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, Women's Literature, English, Autobiography, Mysticism, Medieval England, Margery Kempe, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Palaeography, Medieval Mysticism, and Female Mystics In the Middle Ages
A BBC article on The Skelton Project's YouTube production of Skelton's "Speke, Parott", voiced by me
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Blog post by Diane Watt about archival discoveries and the John Kempe letter
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 12 moreWomen's writing, Medieval English Literature, English, Manuscript Studies, Autobiography, Mysticism, Margery Kempe, Manuscripts (Medieval Studies), Middle English literature and culture, Authorship, Medieval Mysticism, and Scribes
Article by Piotr Celej on the John Kempe letter in Poland's biggest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza
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Interview with me about the Margery Kempe letter in a Polish daily newspaper.
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Article in the University of Groningen newspaper, UK, about the discovery of the Margery Kempe letter.
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Article by the Dutch newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden on the Speke, Parott video
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Article by the Dutch TV channel RTV-Noord on the Speke, Parott video
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Series Editors: Claire Jowitt, University of East Anglia, UK & John McAleer, University of Southampton, UK Editorial board: Mary Fuller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA; Fred Hocker, Vasa Museum, Sweden; Steven Mentz, St... more
Series Editors: Claire Jowitt, University of East Anglia, UK & John McAleer, University of Southampton, UK
Editorial board: Mary Fuller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA; Fred Hocker, Vasa Museum, Sweden; Steven Mentz, St John’s University, USA; Sebastian Sobecki, University of Groningen, Netherlands; David J. Starkey, University of Hull, UK; & Philip Stern, Duke University, USA
Early modern oceans not only provided temperate climates, resources, and opportunities for commercial exchange, they also played a central role in cultural life. Increased exploration, travel, and trade, marked this period of history, and early modern seascapes were cultural spaces and contact zones, where connections and circulations occurred outside established centres of control and the dictates of individual national histories. Likewise, coastlines, rivers, and ports were all key sites for commercial and cultural exchange.
Interdisciplinary in its approach, Maritime Humanities, 1400–1800: Cultures of the Sea welcomes books from across the full range of humanities subjects, and invites submissions that conceptually engage with issues of globalization, post-colonialism, eco-criticism, environmentalism, and the histories of science and technology. The series puts maritime humanities at the centre of a transnational historiographical scholarship that seeks to transform traditional land-based histories of states and nations by focusing on the cultural meanings of the early modern ocean.
Editorial board: Mary Fuller, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA; Fred Hocker, Vasa Museum, Sweden; Steven Mentz, St John’s University, USA; Sebastian Sobecki, University of Groningen, Netherlands; David J. Starkey, University of Hull, UK; & Philip Stern, Duke University, USA
Early modern oceans not only provided temperate climates, resources, and opportunities for commercial exchange, they also played a central role in cultural life. Increased exploration, travel, and trade, marked this period of history, and early modern seascapes were cultural spaces and contact zones, where connections and circulations occurred outside established centres of control and the dictates of individual national histories. Likewise, coastlines, rivers, and ports were all key sites for commercial and cultural exchange.
Interdisciplinary in its approach, Maritime Humanities, 1400–1800: Cultures of the Sea welcomes books from across the full range of humanities subjects, and invites submissions that conceptually engage with issues of globalization, post-colonialism, eco-criticism, environmentalism, and the histories of science and technology. The series puts maritime humanities at the centre of a transnational historiographical scholarship that seeks to transform traditional land-based histories of states and nations by focusing on the cultural meanings of the early modern ocean.
Research Interests: 17th Century & Early Modern Philosophy, Early Modern History, Renaissance Studies, Maritime History, Early Modern Europe, and 12 moreHistory of Renaissance Science, Renaissance literature, English Renaissance Literature, Fifteenth and Sixteenth century culture, Early Modern Art and Visual Culture, Early modern European history, hisory of science, history of religion, Maritime Cultures, Sixteenth Century History, Ottoman Maritime History, Blue Humanities, History of Science and Medicine In Medieval and Renaissance Europe, and Global Renaissance
Online event on 11 October 2022 Description: Few medieval records have received as much attention from literary scholars as a group of documents dating from May to July 1380 that involve Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, the... more
Online event on 11 October 2022
Description:
Few medieval records have received as much attention from literary scholars as a group of documents dating from May to July 1380 that involve Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, the daughter of a London baker. At the heart of this group of records is a quitclaim of May 4, enrolled in the Close Rolls of the English Chancery, releasing Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus”. The word raptus, which in legal contexts can denote “rape,” “abduction,” and much of the spectrum lying between these terms, has challenged Chaucer scholars ever since Frederick J. Furnivall announced this find in 1873. The matter was given significant new impetus in 1993, when Christopher Cannon discovered a second quitclaim by Chaumpaigne – with the word raptus removed – enrolled in the plea rolls of the Court of King’s Bench a few days after the first. Cannon’s discovery has energised foundational strands of Chaucer studies, in particular feminist scholarship, over the last thirty years, but in this time no new documentary evidence has come to light.
Now, new research into the medieval legal collections at The National Archives has uncovered two new life-records relating to the dispute of 1380 – including evidence of the original legal accusations brought against the poet – which offer a radically different understanding of the documentary evidence. These finds, which clarify the relationship between Chaucer and Chaumpaigne, and the nature of the charges brought in the King’s Bench, are to be published in a special edition of the journal Chaucer Review alongside responses from three leading Chaucer scholars, a new biography of Chaumpaigne and an article on the importance of understudied legal collections for medieval literature and historical studies.
At this virtual launch event for the special issue, join historians and literary scholars as they present and discuss the new documents. In the broader context of how this material serves students of Chaucer’s life and works, the event will emphasise how studying sources across established scholarly boundaries and directly with collections experts can generate new and exciting approaches.
Description:
Few medieval records have received as much attention from literary scholars as a group of documents dating from May to July 1380 that involve Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, the daughter of a London baker. At the heart of this group of records is a quitclaim of May 4, enrolled in the Close Rolls of the English Chancery, releasing Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus”. The word raptus, which in legal contexts can denote “rape,” “abduction,” and much of the spectrum lying between these terms, has challenged Chaucer scholars ever since Frederick J. Furnivall announced this find in 1873. The matter was given significant new impetus in 1993, when Christopher Cannon discovered a second quitclaim by Chaumpaigne – with the word raptus removed – enrolled in the plea rolls of the Court of King’s Bench a few days after the first. Cannon’s discovery has energised foundational strands of Chaucer studies, in particular feminist scholarship, over the last thirty years, but in this time no new documentary evidence has come to light.
Now, new research into the medieval legal collections at The National Archives has uncovered two new life-records relating to the dispute of 1380 – including evidence of the original legal accusations brought against the poet – which offer a radically different understanding of the documentary evidence. These finds, which clarify the relationship between Chaucer and Chaumpaigne, and the nature of the charges brought in the King’s Bench, are to be published in a special edition of the journal Chaucer Review alongside responses from three leading Chaucer scholars, a new biography of Chaumpaigne and an article on the importance of understudied legal collections for medieval literature and historical studies.
At this virtual launch event for the special issue, join historians and literary scholars as they present and discuss the new documents. In the broader context of how this material serves students of Chaucer’s life and works, the event will emphasise how studying sources across established scholarly boundaries and directly with collections experts can generate new and exciting approaches.
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The Literary Encyclopedia at www.litencyc.com is looking for qualified writers to enhance its coverage of Middle English Literature. We are currently adding to the Encyclopedia's range of major literary works themselves and a list of... more
The Literary Encyclopedia at www.litencyc.com is looking for qualified writers to enhance its coverage of Middle English Literature. We are currently adding to the Encyclopedia's range of major literary works themselves and a list of required entries is given below. The list is not comprehensive or final, and new proposals of writers/works/context essays that are not currently listed in our database are also welcome. However, we will prioritize articles on writers and works frequently studied on university courses, and those that are highly topical and well-known. Given the variety of works that are needed, some being more 'major' or 'canonical' than others, the advisory word length for each entry will vary and guidance will be given when an offer of potential contribution is received. The overwhelming majority (about 90%) of our contributors are academic scholars, while the remaining percentage is made up of highly endorsed doctoral students and independent researchers. All contributions will be peer-reviewed. More detailed information on the Encyclopedia-including its publishing model, editorial policies, specific information for authors etc.-can be found on its homepage at www.litencyc.com, under the ABOUT tab.
Research Interests:
This intensive seminar introduces MA and PhD students to law and literature in medieval and early modern England. Students will be given hands-on experience with manuscripts and rare books, including historical records at the National... more
This intensive seminar introduces MA and PhD students to law and literature in medieval and early modern England. Students will be given hands-on experience with manuscripts and rare books, including historical records at the National Archives and books of canon law at the British Library. Instructors will also guide students through scholarly criticism in the field of law and literature, navigating such topics as marriage, insurgency and treason, witnessing, homicide, personhood, disability, and property.
Students will be expected to develop a topic throughout the week and present it on the final day of the seminar in front of a panel of leading experts in the field.
Students will be expected to develop a topic throughout the week and present it on the final day of the seminar in front of a panel of leading experts in the field.
Research Interests: History, Canon Law, Constitutional Law, Civil Law, English Literature, and 15 moreChaucer, Middle English, Literature, Poetry, Legal History, Medieval English Literature, Early Modern England, Late Medieval English History, Medieval England, Middle English literature and culture, English law, John Gower, Common Law, Piers Plowman, and Magna Carta
Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen enjoys an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative institution of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Flexible study programmes and academic career... more
Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen enjoys an international reputation as a dynamic and innovative institution of higher education offering high-quality teaching and research. Flexible study programmes and academic career opportunities in a wide variety of disciplines encourage the 36,000 students and researchers alike to develop their own individual talents. As one of the best research universities in Europe, the University of Groningen has joined forces with other top universities and networks worldwide to become a truly global centre of knowledge.
The Faculty of Arts
The Faculty of Arts is built on a long-standing tradition of four centuries. Our mission is to be a top-ranking faculty with both an excellent education and world-quality research, with a strong international orientation, firmly rooted in the North of the Netherlands. We build and share knowledge benefits to society. We work at a modern, broad and international institution, educating over 5,000 Dutch and international students to become forward-looking, articulate and independent academics. We are a team of hardworking and diverse group of 700 staff members.
Function description
The Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture invites applications for a Lectureship in Middle English Language and Literature (0.8 FTE, fixed-term for 1 year)
The successful candidate will be expected to teach and co-teach a number of courses from our Old and Middle English offering at undergraduate level. (For North American applicants: the teaching will amount to the equivalent of a 2-3 load per annum.) These courses have existing syllabi and, in a number of cases, outlines of individual classes, but the successful candidates may modify the course contents depending on their interests. The post holder will be required to teach classes in person throughout the academic year, though some courses will be taught in a hybrid online and physical environment. English is the only language of instruction in the Department.
The normal duties of teaching administration are limited to planning and assessing student work and to holding an office hour each week.
The post is available for a fixed term of twelve months from 1 September 2021.
Interviews will be held online in early July.
Applicants should apply online. To apply please click on ‘Apply’ below on the advertisement on the University website.
For a copy of the Further Particulars or if you have any queries regarding the vacancy, please contact the Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture, Prof. Sebastian Sobecki, s.i.sobecki@rug.nl
Function requirements
The successful candidate will:
● have a PhD in medieval English literature
● be able to teach a variety of undergraduate courses in the area of medieval English literature
● be able to place medieval English literature written in Latin, French, and Old and Middle English in its cultural context
● have a proven record of research activity and/or publications in medieval English literature commensurate with their career level
● demonstrate a high level of competence in early and later forms of the Middle English language
● demonstrate excellence in transferring high-level and current research to the classroom
● have experience teaching medieval English language and literature at university level.
Working conditions
We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:
• a salary, depending on qualifications and work experience, minimum of € 33,480 | £ 26,000 | $ 37,350 (salary scale 10) to a maximum of € 52,824 | £ 41,000 | $ 59,000 (salary scale 10) gross per year for a full-time position
• a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income
• an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance
• minimum of 29 holidays and additional 12 holidays in case of full-time employment
• participation in a pension scheme for employees. Favourable tax agreements may apply to non-Dutch applicants.
The appointment will be on a fixed-term basis from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022.
The Faculty of Arts
The Faculty of Arts is built on a long-standing tradition of four centuries. Our mission is to be a top-ranking faculty with both an excellent education and world-quality research, with a strong international orientation, firmly rooted in the North of the Netherlands. We build and share knowledge benefits to society. We work at a modern, broad and international institution, educating over 5,000 Dutch and international students to become forward-looking, articulate and independent academics. We are a team of hardworking and diverse group of 700 staff members.
Function description
The Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture invites applications for a Lectureship in Middle English Language and Literature (0.8 FTE, fixed-term for 1 year)
The successful candidate will be expected to teach and co-teach a number of courses from our Old and Middle English offering at undergraduate level. (For North American applicants: the teaching will amount to the equivalent of a 2-3 load per annum.) These courses have existing syllabi and, in a number of cases, outlines of individual classes, but the successful candidates may modify the course contents depending on their interests. The post holder will be required to teach classes in person throughout the academic year, though some courses will be taught in a hybrid online and physical environment. English is the only language of instruction in the Department.
The normal duties of teaching administration are limited to planning and assessing student work and to holding an office hour each week.
The post is available for a fixed term of twelve months from 1 September 2021.
Interviews will be held online in early July.
Applicants should apply online. To apply please click on ‘Apply’ below on the advertisement on the University website.
For a copy of the Further Particulars or if you have any queries regarding the vacancy, please contact the Chair of Medieval English Literature and Culture, Prof. Sebastian Sobecki, s.i.sobecki@rug.nl
Function requirements
The successful candidate will:
● have a PhD in medieval English literature
● be able to teach a variety of undergraduate courses in the area of medieval English literature
● be able to place medieval English literature written in Latin, French, and Old and Middle English in its cultural context
● have a proven record of research activity and/or publications in medieval English literature commensurate with their career level
● demonstrate a high level of competence in early and later forms of the Middle English language
● demonstrate excellence in transferring high-level and current research to the classroom
● have experience teaching medieval English language and literature at university level.
Working conditions
We offer you in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities:
• a salary, depending on qualifications and work experience, minimum of € 33,480 | £ 26,000 | $ 37,350 (salary scale 10) to a maximum of € 52,824 | £ 41,000 | $ 59,000 (salary scale 10) gross per year for a full-time position
• a holiday allowance of 8% gross annual income
• an 8.3% end-of-the-year allowance
• minimum of 29 holidays and additional 12 holidays in case of full-time employment
• participation in a pension scheme for employees. Favourable tax agreements may apply to non-Dutch applicants.
The appointment will be on a fixed-term basis from 1 September 2021 to 31 August 2022.
Research Interests:
The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, a poem written in 1436 against the backdrop of the Hundred Years’ War that details European trade routes and ties, pioneers the mercantilist jingoism and protectionist sea-keeping that informs so much of... more
The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, a poem written in 1436 against the backdrop of the Hundred Years’ War that details European trade routes and ties, pioneers the mercantilist jingoism and protectionist sea-keeping that informs so much of Elizabethan colonial thinking. This poem is also one of the more important summaries of mercantile voyaging, piracy, and maritime travel. As a milestone work in the history of medieval travel writing, the poem has a tradition of being included in anthologies of travel writing, starting with Richard Hakluyt’s monumental second edition of his Principal Navigations (1598-1600). Prof. Sobecki argues that Hakluyt used this work as the cornerstone of his expansionist thought and that the Libelle also serves as the blueprint for his Discourse on Western Planting (1584), one of the founding documents of English settler colonialism.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: History, Law, Constitutional Law, British History, British Politics, and 15 moreEnglish History, English, European Constitutional Law, Constitutional Theory, English law, Constitutionalism, Constitutional History, Legal, British Studies, Common Law, Historical Studies, Edward Coke, English Common Law, British Constitutional Law, and Constitutional Law Theory
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Research Interests:
Research Interests:
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Refreshingly, John Scattergood's collection Occasions for Writing does not delude itself by pretending to be more than the sum of its parts: this volume is a snapshot of Scattergood's finest recent work. Though not governed by a... more
Refreshingly, John Scattergood's collection Occasions for Writing does not delude itself by pretending to be more than the sum of its parts: this volume is a snapshot of Scattergood's finest recent work. Though not governed by a unifying theme, many of the essays in this handsome collection address shared concerns, ranging from social class to Henri Lefebvre's thoughts on space.
Research Interests:
This article maintains that John Lydgate’s 'Testament' is not a rejection of his secular career but a literary palinode that attempts to impress a sense of coherence onto a diverse body of work. As the language of... more
This article maintains that John Lydgate’s 'Testament' is not a rejection of his secular career but a literary palinode that attempts to impress a sense of coherence onto a diverse body of work. As the language of conversion, the repetitive litaneutical code at the end of the poem is vindicated by the earlier performance of poetic bravado. Lydgate’s textual piety, which I show to be indebted to the devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, is paradoxically sustained by the displacement of prior secular forms. In a central gesture, the kneeling monk-poet presents his life’s work to God, who acts as his patron. Finally, I demonstrate that manuscript illuminations depicting a kneeling Lydgate confirm the reception of such a pose as simultaneously pious yet secular. As a result, I suggest that we view Lydgate not as a Chaucerian, but first and foremost as a poet dedicated to reconciling the writing of secular literature with a spiritual calling. From: The Chaucer Review Volume 49, Number 3, 2015 pp. 265-293 http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/chaucer_review/v049/49.3.sobecki.html http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/chaucerrev.49.3.issue-3
Research Interests: Christianity, English Literature, Book History, Chaucer, Literature, and 15 moreHistory of Christianity, Liturgy, English, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Art, Lydgate, Geoffrey Chaucer, Jean de Meun, John Lydgate, Gestures, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Century Literature, Holy Name of Jesus, Bury St Edmunds, Illuminated manuscripts, and Illuminated Manuscripts
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The thirteenth-century poem King Horn is widely regarded as the first Middle English romance. Consequently, a disproportional amount of attention has been paid to the work's genre and linguistic features, often at the... more
The thirteenth-century poem King Horn is widely regarded as the first Middle English romance. Consequently, a disproportional amount of attention has been paid to the work's genre and linguistic features, often at the expense of more complex interpretative concerns. One such aspect of the poem is the structural negotiation of the conflict between Saracens and the londisse men allied to the protagonist. This clash permeates the work and pits the land against the sea, elevating the shore to a defining role. 1 This article is based on a ...
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Both Chaucer and Gower depict both Dido (in HF 373, LGW 1349-52, and CA 4.132-34) and Pyramus and Thisbe (in LGW 850, 915 and CA 3.1444, 1490) as taking their own lives by stabbing themselves in the heart, a detail not found in any of... more
Both Chaucer and Gower depict both Dido (in HF 373, LGW 1349-52, and CA 4.132-34) and Pyramus and Thisbe (in LGW 850, 915 and CA 3.1444, 1490) as taking their own lives by stabbing themselves in the heart, a detail not found in any of their known sources. The priority of HF suggests that Chaucer set the example here, but Sobecki is not primarily interested in who came first. He instead focuses on the significance of the heart, not as the most efficient target of a suicide, as we might presume, but as the seat of the passion that ...
Research Interests: Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 moreChaucer, Literature, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, English, Medieval Church History, Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, Medieval Canon Law, Dido, John Gower, Lovesickness, Confessio Amantis, Legend of Good Women, and Mediaevalia
Between 1596 and 1601 John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635) travelled to Germany, Bohemia, Poland–Lithuania, Switzerland, and Italy. His accounts of the Empire and Bohemia are among the most detailed and best informed reports to have... more
Between 1596 and 1601 John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635) travelled to Germany, Bohemia, Poland–Lithuania, Switzerland, and Italy. His accounts of the Empire and Bohemia are among the most detailed and best informed reports to have survived from the period, yet they are virtually unknown to modern scholarship. Furthermore, he was the author of the celebrated description of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, A Relation of the State of Polonia and the United Provinces of that Crown, Anno 1598. Based on new evidence, this article shows that John Peyton's travels in Central Europe formed part of Cecil's attempts to gather intelligence on Spanish diplomatic activity in the Empire and in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. I argue that Peyton was one of many contemporaries who left England on an Elizabethan Grand Tour; a peculiar mixture of visiting European countries for culture, education and intelligence. His writings, however, belong to the more sophisticated written achievements in Elizabethan intelligence gathering.
Research Interests: History, English Literature, Early Modern History, British History, English, and 15 moreEarly Modern England, Early Modern Literature, Intelligence and Espionage, Early Modern Intellectual History, Elizabethan Literature, Literary studies, Early Modern Court Politics, history of Poland, History of Espionage, Art Theory and Criticism, Grand Tour, Early modern diplomacy, Historical Studies, Grand Tour Studies, and Elizabethan Politics
... 13 Gemma legalium seu Compendium aureum (Venice, 1602), entry under mare. ... da Sassoferrato: Studi e documentl per il VI centenario, ed. D. Segolini, 2 vols (Milan, 1962), vol. ... 30 In William's account of King... more
... 13 Gemma legalium seu Compendium aureum (Venice, 1602), entry under mare. ... da Sassoferrato: Studi e documentl per il VI centenario, ed. D. Segolini, 2 vols (Milan, 1962), vol. ... 30 In William's account of King Edgar's charter of 964, Edgar styles himself'Emperor of all Albion ...
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical,... more
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. ...
... Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Wendy Scase 2007 ... type' that comprises texts of two kinds: 'those... more
... Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York Wendy Scase 2007 ... type' that comprises texts of two kinds: 'those that contemn the world and those that want to reform it'.⁶ Davenport contrasts complaint ...
Research Interests:
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical... more
As the first cultural history of the sea in medieval English literature, this book traces premodern myths of insularity from their Old English beginnings to Shakespeare's Tempest. Beginning with a discussion of biblical, classical and pre-Conquest treatments of the sea, it investigates how such works as the Anglo-Norman Voyage of St Brendan, the Tristan romances, the chronicles of Matthew Paris, King Horn, Patience, The Book of Margery Kempe and The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye shape insular ideologies of Englishness. ...