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 Er... more abstractThis 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

Christianity, History, Cultural History, Law, Canon Law, and 72 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 id... more abstractLocal 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

History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Victorian Studies, and 54 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 biblic... more abstractAs 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

Christianity, History, French Literature, Classics, Latin Literature, and 68 more

Under contract with Oxford University Press. The book will contain essential medieval travel accounts, a historical sourcebook, and commissioned companion essays.

History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 10 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

A 14-volume critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600), general editors Claire Jowitt and Dan Carey. The edition will be publ... more abstractA 14-volume critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600), general editors Claire Jowitt and Dan Carey. The edition will be published by Oxford University Press.

History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, and 13 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

A 14-volume critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600), general editors Claire Jowitt and Dan Carey. The edition will be publ... more abstractA 14-volume critical edition of Richard Hakluyt's The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1598-1600), general editors Claire Jowitt and Dan Carey. The edition will be published by Oxford University Press.

History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, and 11 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

I am preparing for the Hakluyt Society a two-volume edition of the surviving travel accounts of John Peyton (1579-1635), including A Relation of the State of Polonia, A Relation of the Kingdom of Bohemia, View of Germ... more abstractI am preparing for the Hakluyt Society a two-volume edition of the surviving travel accounts of John Peyton (1579-1635), including A Relation of the State of Polonia, A Relation of the Kingdom of Bohemia, View of Germany, and Discourse on the Hans Cities.

History, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, German History, Czech History, and 18 more

Location: London

Publisher: Hakluyt Society

I am preparing for the Hakluyt Society a two-volume edition of the surviving travel accounts of John Peyton (1579-1635), including A Relation of the State of Polonia, A Relation of the Kingdom of Bohemia, View of Germ... more abstractI am preparing for the Hakluyt Society a two-volume edition of the surviving travel accounts of John Peyton (1579-1635), including A Relation of the State of Polonia, A Relation of the Kingdom of Bohemia, View of Germany, and Discourse on the Hans Cities.

History, Travel Writing, German History, Czech History, Polish History, and 16 more

Location: London

Publisher: Hakluyt Society

Together with Matthew Boyd Goldie (Rider University) I am co-editing an issue of the journal postmedieval (7.4 for 2016) on recent conceptual developments in insularity and archipelagic theory. The issue will include ... more abstractTogether with Matthew Boyd Goldie (Rider University) I am co-editing an issue of the journal postmedieval (7.4 for 2016) on recent conceptual developments in insularity and archipelagic theory. The issue will include essays by Peregrine Horden, Lynn Staley, Christine Chism, James Smith, Alfred Hiatt, Steve Mentz, and Patricia Ingham. For this project we have secured an NWO Visitor's Grant, which will enable Matthew Boyd Goldie to spend four months in Groningen. http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/archive/2016_issues.html#Issue-7.4

Critical Theory, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 11 more

Publication Name: postmedieval 7:4 (2016)

History, Law, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, and 12 more

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Tudor England, and 7 more

Publisher: D.S. Brewer

Publication Date: 2018

This book will reassess fifteenth-century literature and the relationship between writers and power in England by examining the production and reception of manuscripts.

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval English Literature, and 11 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, and 6 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Publication Date: 2018

Publication Name: The Oxford Hakluyt Handbook, eds. Claire Jowitt and Dan Carey

English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, and 3 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Publication Date: 2016

Publication Name: A New Companion to Chaucer, ed. Peter Brown (Wiley-Blackwell)

"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-ye... more abstract"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."

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 3 more

More Info: David Wallace, ed., Europe: a Literary History, 1348-1418, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP) [forthcoming]

"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 empero... more abstract"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."

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval German Literature, Literature, and 2 more

More Info: David Wallace, ed., Europe: a Literary History, 1348-1418, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP) [forthcoming]

"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 disp... more abstract"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."

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval German Literature, Literature, and 3 more

More Info: David Wallace, ed., Europe: a Literary History, 1348-1418, 2 vols (Oxford: OUP) [forthcoming]

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 ... more abstractThe 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.

Christianity, History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval History, and 15 more

Publication Date: 2015

Publication Name: Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37

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 rare... more abstractThis 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. http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199935338-e-141?rskey=7QrJzg&result=1

History, American History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 26 more

Location: Oxford

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Publication Date: 2015

Publication Name: Medieval and Tudor Literature, ed. James Simpson (Oxford Handbooks Online)

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 se... more abstractAmong 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

History, Diplomatic History, Palaeogeography, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 42 more

Location: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=10001263&fileId=S0038713415002316

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Journal Name: Speculum

Publication Name: Speculum 90

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/in... more abstractThis 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

History, Diplomatic History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, and 21 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 con... more abstractThis 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

Religion, Christianity, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Theology, and 36 more

History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, Book History, and 12 more

More Info: 16:1, 80-87

Publication Date: 2015

Publication Name: The Library

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 r... more abstractBetween 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.

History, English Literature, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, British History, and 19 more

Publication Date: 2015

Publication Name: Renaissance Studies 29:3, 394-410

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, Cam... more abstractPeyton, 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.

History, European History, German History, Czech History, British History, and 15 more

Publication Date: 2015

Publication Name: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

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 rec... more abstractThe 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.

History, Diplomatic History, Eastern European Studies, English Literature, Travel Writing, and 35 more

Publication Date: 2014

Publication Name: The English Historical Review 129:5

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 t... more abstractJohn 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).

Christianity, History, English Literature, Translation Studies, Early Modern History, and 10 more

More Info: in P. Bossier, H. Hendrix, P. Procaccioli, eds, Dynamic Translations in the European Renaissance / La traduzione del moderno nel Cinquecento europeo (Manziana: Vecchiarelli, 2011), pp. 79-90.

Publication Date: 2011

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 preoccupatio... more abstractThe 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.

History, Economic History, Diplomatic History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 26 more

More Info: New Medieval Literatures 12 (2011), 251-88

Publisher: Brepols

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2010

Publication Name: New Medieval Literatures

[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 indicativ... more abstract[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.

Christianity, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 22 more

Publication Date: 2010

Publication Name: in Jacobus van Dijk, ed, Onder Orchideeën: Nieuwe Oogst uit de Tuin der Geesteswetenschappen te Groningen (Groningen: Barkhuis Publishing)

This chapter probes the humble beginnings of King Edgar’s legendary title to archipelagic dominion by examining the circumstances that led to the forgery of the Altitonantis charter during England's 12th-century Anarc... more abstractThis chapter probes the humble beginnings of King Edgar’s legendary title to archipelagic dominion by examining the circumstances that led to the forgery of the Altitonantis charter during England's 12th-century Anarchy. I show how this 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.

History, American History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 46 more

More Info: in The Sea and Englishness in the Middle Ages: Maritime Narratives, Identity, and Culture, ed. Sebastian Sobecki (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011), 1-30

[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 topog... more abstract[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.

Christianity, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and 6 more

More Info: [The attached file is a pre-print version] in Thomas Honegger, Andrew J. Johnston, and Winfried Rudolf, eds, Clerks, Wives, and Historians: Essays on Medieval English Literature (Berne, Frankfurt a. M., New York: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 25-45

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

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 d... more abstractFor 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.

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, and 8 more

More Info: Neophilologus 92:1 (2008), 127-39

Publisher: Springer

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: Neophilologus

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 Euro... more abstractThe 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.

History, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 13 more

More Info: New Blackfriars 89:1022 (2008), 478-87

Publisher: Wiley Online Library

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: New Blackfriars

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 disco... more abstractGower’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

History, Cultural Studies, Psychology, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 24 more

More Info: Anglia 125:1 (2007), 205-16

Publisher: reference-global.com

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007

Publication Name: Anglia-Zeitschrift für englische Philologie

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 abstractThe 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.

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Medieval English Literature, and 4 more

More Info: Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 18:1, 79-86

Publisher: informaworld.com

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006

Publication Name: Al-Masaq

Classics, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 10 more

More Info: Notes and Queries 54:3 (2007), 231-33

Publisher: Oxford Univ Press

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2007

Publication Name: Notes and Queries

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 wha... more abstractSir 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.

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 6 more

More Info: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 42 (2006), 463-75

Publisher: ifa.amu.edu.pl

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006

Publication Name: Studia Anglica Posnaniensia

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, and 8 more

More Info: Notes and Queries 52:4 (2005), 443-45

Publisher: Oxford Univ Press

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005

Publication Name: Notes and Queries

Christianity, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, and 7 more

More Info: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 107:3 (2006) , 285-89 Copyright © 2006 Modern Language Society of Helsinki. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy.

History, Medieval History, German History, Medieval Studies, Germany (Medieval Church History), and 2 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 26

History, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Crusades, History of Crusades, and 5 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon vol. 26

History, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval German Literature, and 9 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 26

Critical Theory, Philology, History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 9 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, vol. 26

History, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Medieval Church History, Early Medieval Ireland, and 11 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon vol. 26

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 11 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL), vol. 27

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 10 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL), vol. 27

Jędrzej Gałka of Dobczyn, master at the University of Cracow, born c. 1400, died after 1451 Alternative names: Andrzej (Andrew)

History, Medieval Literature, Theology, Medieval History, Literature, and 13 more

More Info: gen. ed. Patrick Geary (Turnhout: Brepols and UCLA Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages

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... more abstractThe 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.

History, Classics, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval German Literature, and 18 more

More Info: gen. ed. Patrick Geary (Turnhout: Brepols and UCLA Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)

Publication Date: 2005

Publication Name: International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages

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

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Hagiography, Medieval German Literature, and 10 more

More Info: gen. ed. Patrick Geary (Turnhout: Brepols and UCLA Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: International Encyclopaedia for the Middle Ages

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),... more abstractI 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

History, English Literature, Polish History, Polish Studies, Travel Literature, and 6 more

More Info: The Seventeenth Century 18:2 (2004), 172-79

Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 20 more

More Info: Mediaevalia 25 (2004), 107-22.

Publisher: gowerbib.lib.utsa.edu

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2004

Publication Name: Mediaevalia

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 ... more abstractBenedeit'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.

Christianity, French Literature, Latin Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, and 22 more

More Info: Neophilologus 87:2 (2003), 193-207

Publisher: Springer

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2003

Publication Name: Neophilologus

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 ... more abstractAlthough 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.

Christianity, English Literature, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 19 more

More Info: The Review of English Studies 53:3 (2002), 329-43

Publisher: Oxford Univ Press

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2002

Publication Name: The Review of English Studies

French Literature, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, French Studies, and 10 more

More Info: Notes and Queries 48:3 (2001), 220-22

Publisher: Oxford Univ Press

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2001

Publication Name: Notes and Queries

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Poetry, Medieval English Literature, Tudor England, and 5 more

Journal Name: Speculum 90:3

Publication Date: 2015

History, Economic History, Admiralty Law, Medieval History, German History, and 29 more

More Info: 119:2 (2014), 587

Publication Date: 2014

Publication Name: The American Historical Review

University of Groningen

Historical Linguistics, Germanic linguistics, Old Norse Language, Linguistics, Orkney and Shetland studies, and 2 more

Publication Date: 2013

Publication Name: Speculum

University of Groningen

History, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Maritime History, Mediterranean, and 9 more

More Info: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8889878

Publication Date: 2013

Publication Name: Speculum

English Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 10 more

Publication Date: 2013

Publication Name: Studies in the Age of Chaucer 35, 438-42

Christianity, English Literature, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 8 more

Publication Date: 2013

Publication Name: English Studies 94:6, 734-735

Christianity, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 6 more

Publication Date: 2012

Publication Name: Modern Philology

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, and 5 more

Publication Date: 2012

Publication Name: English Studies

English Literature, Early Modern History, Literature, and Early Modern Literature

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2011

Publication Name: Anglia-Zeitschrift für englische …

The study of medieval seafaring is an unthankful pursuit, scattered across a number of more or less adjacent academic disciplines. But to isolate the profession of the shipmaster and chart its course over a period of ... more abstractThe study of medieval seafaring is an unthankful pursuit, scattered across a number of more or less adjacent academic disciplines. But to isolate the profession of the shipmaster and chart its course over a period of one hundred years comes close to groping for a needle across quite a few haystacks.

History, Economic History, Law, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, and 11 more

Journal Name: The Medieval Review

Publication Date: 2009

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, and 2 more

Publisher: JSTOR

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: The Journal of British Studies

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Legal History, and 1 more

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2008

Publication Name: Anglia

History, Cartography, Art History, Travel Writing, Medieval History, and 5 more

Publication Date: 2007

Publication Name: Medium Aevum

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2007

Publication Name: Anglia

Scottish Literature, English Literature, Middle English and Middle Scots Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2007

Publication Name: English Studies

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, English, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2007

Publication Name: English Studies

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Anglo-Saxon Studies, Literature, and 3 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Anglia

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and Old English, Middle English, Old Norse poetry and prose

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Anglia

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, and 1 more

Publication Date: 2006

Publication Name: Anglia

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and John Gower

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2006

Publication Name: Anglia. Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie

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 Accessi... more abstractThis 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.

History, Russian Studies, English Literature, Travel Writing, British History, and 27 more

Publication Date: May 29, 2015

Publication Name: British Library European Studies Blog

An account of finding the Margery Kempe letter in Gdańsk.

Christianity, History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval History, and 16 more

Publication Date: May 19, 2015

Publication Name: Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon Blog (University of Surrey)

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 P... more abstractThat 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.

History, Medieval History, Chaucer, Middle English, Literature, and 8 more

Location: London

Event Date: Jul 2016

Organization: New Chaucer Society Congress

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.

History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Medieval Studies, and 9 more

Location: Bangor, Wales

Event Date: Sep 2015

Organization: Aberystwyth and Bangor Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (IMEMS) Conference, ‘Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern Period’

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 ... more abstractThe 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.

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Middle English, Women's writing, and 12 more

Location: Oxford

Event Date: Jul 2015

Organization: Early Book Society Conference 2015

Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Berlin 2015

History, Constitutional Law, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 10 more

Location: Berlin

Event Date: Mar 2015

Organization: RSA Annual Meeting

History, Travel Writing, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, and 4 more

Location: Reykjavik

Event Date: Jul 2014

Organization: New Chaucer Society

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, and 6 more

Location: Cambridge

Event Date: Jul 2014

Organization: Writing Britain: 500-1500

History, Travel Writing, Early Modern History, Literature, Manuscript Studies, and 4 more

Location: St Andrews

Event Date: Jun 2014

Organization: 6th St Andrews USTC Book Conference

Travel Writing, Early Modern History, Early Modern England, History of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, history of Poland, and 1 more

Location: Galway

Event Date: Sep 2013

Organization: Early Modern Travel: Theory and Practice, Moore Institute, National University of Ireland, Galway

History, English Literature, Early Modern History, Literature, Polish History, and 7 more

Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Event Date: Sep 2013

Organization: Agricola Seminar, University of Groningen

Christianity, History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 13 more

Location: Leiden

Event Date: Dec 2012

Organization: Thirty-Fourth Symposium on Old English, Middle English and Historical Linguistics in the Low Countries

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 6 more

Location: Valladolid, Spain

Event Date: Jul 2011

Organization: 2nd International Congress of the John Gower Society

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 9 more

Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Event Date: Nov 2010

Organization: Groningen Medieval Society, University of Groningen

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Early Modern History, Literature, and 7 more

Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Event Date: Oct 2010

Organization: Dynamic Translation in the European Renaissance, University of Groningen

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Postcolonial Studies, and 7 more

Location: Groningen, The Netherlands

Event Date: Apr 2009

Organization: University of Groningen

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Postcolonial Studies, and 8 more

Location: Montreal

Event Date: Dec 2008

Organization: McGill University

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Legal History, and 8 more

Location: Swansea

Event Date: Jul 2008

Organization: New Chaucer Society, Swansea University

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 7 more

Location: Leeds

Event Date: Jul 2008

Organization: International Medieval Congress Leeds

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 4 more

Location: Montreal

Event Date: Feb 2007

Organization: McGill University

Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 8 more

Location: New York, Fordham University

Event Date: Jul 2006

Organization: New Chaucer Society

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval Studies, and 5 more

Location: Geneva

Event Date: May 2006

Organization: 3e Cycle Conference, Medieval and Early Modern English Texts and Contexts (Conférence Universitaire de Suisse Occidentale)

History, Art History, Medieval Literature, Theology, Medieval History, and 9 more

Location: Munich

Event Date: Mar 2006

Organization: Studientag zum englischen Mittelalter (SEM VIII), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Maritime Law, and 6 more

Location: Bochum, Germany

Event Date: Mar 2005

Organization: Studientag zum englischen Mittelalter (SEM VII), Ruhr-Universität Bochum

History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Literature, Medieval English Literature, and 3 more

Location: London

Event Date: Mar 2005

Organization: Birckbeck College [Conference: Saracens, Islam and Medieval England]

Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005

This is a recording of John Skelton's 'Lawde and Prayse'. It was made by the Skelton Project (www.skeltonproject.com) and features my voice.

English Literature, Digital Humanities, Middle English, Poetry, Tudor England, and 6 more

My recording of John Skelton's 'Speke Parrot' for The Skelton Project (http://www.skeltonproject.com) Although this is an early sixteenth-century poem, I have tried to read it with a mid-fifteenth-century pronuncia... more abstractMy recording of John Skelton's 'Speke Parrot' for The Skelton Project (http://www.skeltonproject.com) 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 received over 100,000 views on YouTube in its first 24 hours and was featured in a BBC article.

History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 15 more

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.

Religion, Christianity, English Literature, Middle English, Old English Literature, and 8 more

This is one of our second-year BA medieval electives, as taught in 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The course focuses on Middle English and Anglo-French romances and histories.

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, British History, and 24 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 cultur... more abstractAs 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.

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval French Literature, Chaucer, Middle English, and 15 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 th... more abstractAs 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.

History, English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Chaucer, and 10 more

On 9 November 2015, R.F. Yeager will give a visiting lecture in Groningen on 'Amans the Memorious'. See attachment for details.

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Middle English, Medieval Studies, and 6 more

Call for applications for 4 PhD positions (1.0 FTE each) ‘Communication and Exploitation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages’ PhD research project & host university Each of the four PhD students will conduct individu... more abstractCall for applications for 4 PhD positions (1.0 FTE each) ‘Communication and Exploitation of Knowledge in the Middle Ages’ PhD research project & host university Each of the four PhD students will conduct individual research within the theme of the Graduate Programme, based on the research proposal they submit. They will each be appointed at one of the six participating universities. Each PhD project will be conducted at the university where the relevant main supervisor works. For further information, please see attachment.

History, Medieval Philosophy, Art History, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 10 more

The Hakluyt Society awards an annual essay prize (or more than one, if the judges so decide) of up to a total of £750. The prize or prizes for 2016 will be presented at the Hakluyt Society’s Annual General Meeting in ... more abstractThe Hakluyt Society awards an annual essay prize (or more than one, if the judges so decide) of up to a total of £750. The prize or prizes for 2016 will be presented at the Hakluyt Society’s Annual General Meeting in London in June 2016, where the winner or winners will be invited to attend as the Society’s guests; travel expenses within the UK will be reimbursed. Winners will also receive a one-year membership of the Hakluyt Society. The Hakluyt Society will publish winning entries in a special section of its peer-reviewed on-line Journal, should the author wish to do so.

British Literature, History, Modern History, Cultural History, Geography, and 15 more

If you have a book proposal or manuscript about the cultural meanings of early modern oceans, then please get in touch.

Maritime History, Maritime and Oceanic History, Maritime Literature, and Maritime Cultures

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.

English Literature, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, Disability Studies, Medieval French Literature, and 29 more

Location: http://www.medievalists.net/2015/10/22/john-gowers-handwriting-identified/

Event Date: 2015

Organization: Medievalists.net

Brief post by the The Independent on the 'Speke, Parott' video

History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 9 more

Publication Date: Sep 15, 2015

Publication Name: The Independent (online)

Article by The Guardian's Alison Flood on my discovery of the John Kempe letter

History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 14 more

Publication Date: May 8, 2015

Publication Name: The Guardian

A BBC article on The Skelton Project's YouTube production of Skelton's "Speke, Parott", voiced by me

History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 7 more

Publication Date: Oct 8, 2014

Publication Name: BBC News

Blog post by Diane Watt about archival discoveries and the John Kempe letter

History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 12 more

Publication Date: May 28, 2015

Publication Name: Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon Blog

Article by Piotr Celej on the John Kempe letter in Poland's biggest daily, Gazeta Wyborcza

Christianity, History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval History, and 11 more

Publication Date: Jun 3, 2015

Publication Name: Gazeta Wyborcza

Interview with me about the Margery Kempe letter in a Polish daily newspaper.

History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 11 more

Publication Date: May 18, 2015

Publication Name: Dziennik Bałtycki

Article in the University of Groningen newspaper, UK, about the discovery of the Margery Kempe letter.

History, English Literature, Women's Studies, Medieval History, Middle English, and 11 more

Publication Date: May 15, 2015

Publication Name: UK University of Groningen

Article by the Dutch newspaper Dagblad van het Noorden on the Speke, Parott video

History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Medieval Literature, Medieval History, and 7 more

Publication Date: Oct 10, 2014

Publication Name: Dagblad van het Noorden (DVHN)

Article by the Dutch TV channel RTV-Noord on the Speke, Parott video

History, English Literature, Digital Humanities, Medieval Literature, Early Modern History, and 6 more

Publication Date: Oct 10, 2014

Publication Name: RTV-Noord