Quantity matters in the meter of Beowulf and other early English poems. It matters in the form of a metrical principle known as resolution. Metrical resolution served alliterative poets as a way of counting; it can serve modern scholars as evidence for the cultural meanings of verse craft. This paper therefore has two sections: How it Works and…[Read more]

Through the comparative study of non-Anglophone translations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, we can achieve the progressive goals of Emily Apter’s “translational transnationalism” and Edward Said’s “cosmopolitan humanism.” Both translation and humanism were intrinsic to Chaucer’s initial composition of the Tales, and in turn, both shap…[Read more]

Through the comparative study of non-Anglophone translations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, we can achieve the progressive goals of Emily Apter’s “translational transnationalism” and Edward Said’s “cosmopolitan humanism.” Both translation and humanism were intrinsic to Chaucer’s initial composition of the Tales, and in turn, both shap…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

Round Table on Diversity and Teaching Medieval Studies sponsored by Graduate Student Council. Session title: “Tearing Down Walls, Building Bridges:
Medieval Diversity and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Syllabus Design and Teaching.” This paper is about two courses that illustrate the principle “Diversity in Every Course Title” and several…[Read more]

With thirty-seven named locations, the Digby Mary Magdalene is rightfully considered to require the most elaborate staging of the Middle English dramatic corpus. In this article, I re-examine the manuscript to find evidence of how the various locations in the play can be grouped into what I term staging complexes. Beginning with the division of…[Read more]

The extracodical stanzas of John Lydgate’s Testament and “Quis Dabit Meo Capiti Fontem Lacrimarum” in the Clopton chantry chapel of the Great Church of Holy Trinity, Long Melford, not only are two intriguing witnesses differing in presentation and language from the manuscript copies but also can be considered as part of a rhetorical program where…[Read more]

Paper given for the LLC Middle English Forum’s roundtable on “Campus Chaucer. ” See also separately uploaded PowerPoint slides (not strictly necessary; the bold in the text, however, refers to a change of slide). Contains many informational links. Accompanying PowerPoint: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6BW3B

Paper given for the LLC Middle English Forum’s roundtable on “Campus Chaucer. ” See also separately uploaded PowerPoint slides (not strictly necessary; the bold in the text, however, refers to a change of slide). Contains many informational links. Accompanying PowerPoint: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6BW3B

PowerPoint to accompany paper (http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6GP71) given in #s280 at the 2017 MLA Convention.

PowerPoint to accompany paper (http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6GP71) given in #s280 at the 2017 MLA Convention.

This essay explores insistently practical medieval texts—works whose explicit goal is to assist their readers to make something in the world beyond the page (a book, a culinary dish, an ointment, an object) and asks if they can be said to have a poetics. Drawing on Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of practice as well as Gérard Gene…[Read more]

This essay explores insistently practical medieval texts—works whose explicit goal is to assist their readers to make something in the world beyond the page (a book, a culinary dish, an ointment, an object) and asks if they can be said to have a poetics. Drawing on Michel de Certeau and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of practice as well as Gérard Gene…[Read more]

I’m taking the word “synagogue” seriously, and read Erkenwald’s judge as symbolically “Jewish,” a figure of the sclerotic quality of the law, a foil for Christianity’s uncertain relationship to its own law. I’ll probably publish this before my career’s over, but clearly I’m in no hurry….

A reflection on the state of the archive in the state of post-theory.