Research
Research Interests
Old English language and literature, Middle English language and literature, medieval historiography, medieval regional culture, philology, digital humanities.
Books | Essays | Editions | Reviews & Reports | Recordings | Projects | Full Curriculum Vitae
Books
Regionalism and Identity in Medieval England (in
preparation)
Abstract
A Handbook of Philological Methods, with
Michael D.C. Drout
This project, which is in its initial conceptual
stages, is intended to be an introduction for graduate
students to the methods and uses of philology for
addressing the critical issues which occupy Old
English and Middle English studies today. The initial
work will take the form of a series of articles
to be published in The Heroic
Age.
Essays
"Vernacular Legal Language in La3amon's Brut" (submitted for publication in
La3amon: Past and Present Contexts, eds. Rosamund Allen and Carole Weinberg.
Continues work begun in "Frið and Fredom: Royal Forests and English Jurisprudence
in La3amon's Brut" by examining the extent to which La3amon
had contact with pre-Conquest legal tradition, particularly in its documentary form.
Traces the recurrence of Old English legal terminology in La3amon's Brut, arguing
that the 'legalistic' features of his writing are part of the same phenomenon as
his linguistic archaism. Formulates a theory of how vernacular literary materials
were passed down to and adapted by La3amon and argues that there was a strong
regional component to the transmission of legalistic language developed by Bishop
Wulfstan of Worcester. Within the literary of Worcester and its environs, Wulfstan's
legalisms survived in the early Middle English period when they could function
as both a rhetorical model for La3amon and a potential mirror for the legal
concerns of his own time.
"Philological Inquiries 2: Something 'Old', Something 'New': Material Philology and the Recovery of the Past" (with Michael D.C. Drout),
forthcoming in The Heroic Age 13 (2010).
This is the second of a series of columns on philology. Explores the impact of the "New Philology" with its interest in the material of the text on
critical practices and the use of older philological methods. Using Christine Franzen's work on the Tremulous Hand of Worcester, we show that
if "material philology" is to be more than just looking at manuscripts,
it requires the hard-won knowledge base of the "old" philology, and no
ideological critique or shift in emphasis can make those methods any less essential.
But, if supported by such traditional philological knowledge, it has the potential
to open up new doors in our understanding of vernacular literary culture in the
post-Conquest period.
"Frið and Fredom: Royal Forests
and English Jurisprudence in La3amon's Brut."
(forthcoming in Modern
Philology)
Traces the development of the Anglo-Saxon jurisprudential
principle of frið from pre-Conquest usage to its
adoption as a term for the royal forest in La3amon's
Brut. Argues that vernacular writers continued
to use Old English legal terminology after the
Norman Conquest as a means of engaging with and
commenting on legal issues, even after most official
legal discourse had shifted to Latin.
"Philological Inquiries 1: Method and Merovingians" (with Michael D.C. Drout), The Heroic
Age 12 (2009).
This is the first of a series of columns on philology. Demonstrates the utility of the approach by discussing Tom Shippey's
examination of the word "Merovingian" in Beowulf. The philological approach is shown to illuminate culture, history
and politics and shed new light on an old problem in Beowulf scholarship, the date of composition.
"Service." In Reading
The Lord of the Rings, ed. Robert
Eaglestone (London: Continuum, 2006), pp.
138-148.
Argues that The Lord of the
Rings reflects upon the history of service and its continued viability as a form of social cooperation. Tolkien explores the strengths and weakness of historical service cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Edwardian England in order to confront the associations between social deference and social exploitation which problematise service cultures in the twentieth century.
"Animal
Imagery and Oral Discourse in Havelok's First
Fight." Viator:
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 35
(2004): 311-327.
Examines the poets use of Anglo-Scandinavian folk
material and popular animal imagery to examine
relationships between truth and meaning. The poet's
inconsistent imagery and multiple narrative perspectives
evoke the textual variations produced by oral transmission.
I argue that the poet consciously adopts this feature
of oral discourse in order to draw attention to
its fallibility as a conveyor of historical veracity
and direct the readers attention to its deeper
truths about the multiple ways in which humans
experience bondage.
The
Æðelen of Engle:
Constructing Ethnic and Regional Identities
in La3amon's Brut." Exemplaria:
A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance
Studies 16.1 (2004): 95-130.
Examines the depiction of Scandinavians in English
texts of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries in
order to assess La3amon's perspective on the cultural
diversity of post-Conquest England. La3amon's portrayal
of the Scandinavian role in British history reveals
both a western bias against easterners claims to
legal freedoms based on supposed Scandinavian ancestry
and a model for the assimilation of foreign cultures
based on loyalty to the king.
"The
Legend of Havelok the Dane and the Historiography
of East Anglia." Studies
in Philology 100:3 (2003): 245-277.
Argues that the names found in the Havelok legend provide evidence of its origins in the historiographical tradition of East Anglia,
a learned and literate enterprise that attempted to establish an identity for the region. Certain elements of the tale were invented
by Gaimar in his Estoire des Engleis based on elements in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian historical literature (some of
which can be traced in Scandinavian sources). Later adapters of the tale sometimes turning back to Gaimar and sometimes to sources
similar to those he had used, in order to enhance its credentials as local history or to show how the Danish presence in East Anglia participated in the development of English social and legal institutions. The popularization of the Havelok story provides a model of the way the ideas of learned historiographers reached and influenced a much broader audience.
"Iron-Clad
Evidence in Early Medieval Dialectology: Old
English isern, isen, and iren." Neuphilologische
Mitteilungen 98:4 (1997): 371-390.
Explores the three forms of the Old English word
for iron using electronic corpus compiled for the Dictionary
of Old English. Disproves the Oxford English
Dictionary's statement that iren was the poetic
form of the word by showing that this theory is
based only on the evidence of Beowulf. Evidence
from the larger corpus shows that this form arose
in the West Midlands in the ninth century, and
the dominance of iren over the more usual poetic
form isern provides powerful evidence that the
poem was composed or transmitted in a West Mercian
dialect.
Editions
Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender. For the Broadview Anthology of British Literature (Calgary: Broadview Press). "October" forthcoming in 2007. "January," "April," "November," and "December" forthcoming in 2008.
Reviews and Reports
Review of Andrew Galloway, Medieval Literature and Culture (London: Continuum, 2006) (forthcoming in Comitatus).
Review of Thomas Bredehoft, Early English Metre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005). Comitatus 38 (2007): xxx-xxx.
Entries in The J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, ed. Michael D.C. Drout (New York: Routledge, 2006).
"Sigelwara Land," "Philology: General Works, 1924-1927," " King Horn," "Saxo Grammaticus," "Iþþlen in Sawles Warde"
Entries in the International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages-Online. Brepols Publishers, 2004-2005.
"The Normans in Britain and Ireland” and “The Normans in Britain and Ireland: Post-1154"
Review of Christine Chism, Alliterative Revivals (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 10.2 (2004 for Fall 2001): 108-121.
Anglo-Saxon Studies in North America. Newsletter of the Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland (TOEBI) (Summer 2004): 6-7.
Recordings
A Recitation of Cleanness. The Chaucer Studio (Recorded at the 38th International Congress on Medieval Studies, 9-11 May 2003 in Kalamazoo, MI).