A third year Ph.D student at the Centre, I combine the traditional bibliographical fields of codicology and palaeography with literary analysis.  One of my favourite papers, "Chaucer's Frankenstein Text", presented at the Southeastern Medieval Association, uses a formalist approach to map out how Chaucer negotiates medieval notions of unity and miscellaneity.  Over the summer, I spent five weeks in Europe, presenting at conferences and exploring archives in Edinburgh, London, Oxford and Cambridge. My recent work on an edition of the Middle English life of St. Petronilla prompted an interest in the kinds of vernacular literature that had developed within England prior to Chaucer.



Pursuing this, my major field topic asks how the nature of specific sites of manuscript production in England produced texts and how those texts in turn shaped the nature of literary communities from 1200-1420.



Recent Projects:

2009 Conference on Editorial Problems: Manuscripts and the Forms of Middle English Literary Texts, Co-convener

What’s in a Paraph?  A New Methodology and its Implications for the Auchinleck Manuscript, Journal of the Early Book Society 13 (forthcoming)  

"Sacred Communities: The Evolving Audiences of the Life of Saint Dunstan", New Medieval Literatures (Proposed)

Major Field Title:

Communities of Literary Production, 1200-1420

Major Field Committee:

Dr. Alexandra Gillespie (Adviser)
Dr. Will Robins
Dr. David Townsend