Department of English at the University of Virginia

Interests

The central concern of my work has been and is the interpretation of medieval literature for modern readers, both in its historical context and in the contexts suggested by theory in our own time. I’ve mostly written about poetry from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, but I’m also interested in late-medieval religious prose, and in recent years have written on Julian of Norwich, The Mirror of Simple Souls, The Cloud of Unknowing, and The Book of Margery Kempe. My next book will be Medieval Autographies: The "I" of the Text", a sequel to Textual Subjectivity, in which I explore the late-medieval development of writing in and of the first person.

Books

• Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics. Oxford University Press, 2005.
• The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (trans.). Penguin, 2001.
• The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives. Cambridge University Press, 1993 (reissued 2005).
• Readings in Medieval Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1987, reissued 2009.
• Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1985, reissued 2009.
• Chaucer: The Reeve's Prologue and Tale (ed., with Elizabeth Spearing). Cambridge University Press, 1979.
• Medieval Dream-Poetry. Cambridge University Press, 1976.
• Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde. Edward Arnold, 1976.
• Poetry of the Age of Chaucer (ed., with Elizabeth Spearing). Edward Arnold, 1972.
• Shakespeare: The Tempest (ed., with Elizabeth Spearing). Macmillan, 1971.
• The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge University Press, 1970 (reissued 2010).
• Chaucer: The Knight's Tale (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 1966: rev. edition, 1995.
• Chaucer: The Franklin's Prologue and Tale (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 1966; rev. edition, 1994.
• An Introduction to Chaucer (with Maurice Hussey & James Winny). Cambridge, 1965.
• Criticism and Medieval Poetry. Edward Arnold, 1964, rev. edition with additional chapter, 1972.
• Chaucer: The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (ed.). Cambridge University Press, 1964; rev. edition, 1994.

Articles

• "Was Chaucer a Poet?", Poetica 73 (2010).
• "Dream Poems", in Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches, ed. Susanna Fein and David Raybin (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010).
• "The Journey to Jerusalem: Mandeville and Hilton", Essays in Medieval Studies 25 (2008).
• "Marguerite Porete: Courtliness and Transcendence in The Mirror of Simple Souls", in Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages, ed. Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter (Routledge, 2007).
• "Language and its Limits: The Cloud of Unknowing and Pearl", in Approaching Medieval English Anchoritic and Mystical Texts, ed. Dee Dyas, Valerie Edden and Roger Ellis (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005).
• "Margery Kempe" in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (D.S. Brewer, 2004).
• "Textual Performance: Chaucerian Prologues and the French Dit", in Text and Voice: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. Marianne Børch (University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004).
• "The Book of Margery Kempe; Or, The Diary of a Nobody," Southern Review 38 (2002).
• The Mirror of Simple Souls (trans. extracts), in Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality, ed. Elizabeth Spearing (Penguin, 2002).
• "Narrative Voice: The Case of Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale," New Literary History 32 (2001).
• "The Cloud of Unknowing: Absolute Truth and Historical Context," in Text and Context, ed. John Unsworth [http://bodoni.village.virginia.edu/text-context] (2001).
• "Dreams in The Kingis Quair and the Duke's Book," in Charles d'Orleans in England (1415-1440), ed. Mary-Jo Arn (D.S. Brewer, 2000).
• "Sir Orfeo: Madness and Gender," in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Longman, 2000).
• "Introduction" to Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford University Press, 1999).
• "The Subtext of Patience: God as Mother and the Whale's Belly," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999).

Honors

• Honorary Ph.D., University of Lund, Sweden, 2011
• Conway Lecturer, University of Notre Dame, 2007
• Benjamin Meaker Visiting Professor, University of Bristol, 2003
• All-University Outstanding Teacher Award, University of Virginia, 2000-2001
• Lansdowne Visiting Fellow, University of Victoria, British Columbia, 1993
• Life Fellow, Queens' College, Cambridge 1987-
• William Matthews Lecturer, Birkbeck College, University of London, 1983-1984
• W. M. Tapp Research Fellow, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1959-1960