From medieval English to postcolonial studies

A brief account of the academic transition that I made beginning with my first academic post in Auckland, New Zealand where I was lecturer in Medieval English during the 1970s then moved to Oxford where I completed a D Phil in reformation sermons, then to the University of Otago in Dunedin -- New Zealand again -- where I began teaching New Zealand literature and Postcolonial theory and writing, to my present work in the UK at the University of Northampton, and talking of some of the writers I have met on the way

The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies

'The Orality of a Silent Age: The Place of Orality in Medieval Studies' uses a brief survey of current work on Old English poetry as the point of departure for arguing that although useful, the concepts of orality and literacy have, in medieval studies, been extended further beyond their literal referents of spoken and written communication than is heuristically useful. Recent emphasis on literate methods and contexts for the writing of our surviving Anglo-Saxon poetry, in contradistinction to the previous emphasis on oral ones, provides the basis for this criticism. Despite a significant amount of revisionist work, the concept of orality remains something of a vortex into which a range of only party related issues have been sucked: authorial originality/communal property; impromptu composition/meditated composition; authorial and audience alienation/immediacy. The relevance of orality to these issues is not in dispute; the problem is that they do not vary along specifically oral/literate axes. The article suggests that this is symptomatic of a wider modernist discourse in medieval studies whereby modern, literate society is (implicitly) contrasted with medieval, oral society: the extension of the orality/literacy axis beyond its literal reference has to some extent facilitated the perpetuation of an earlier contrast between primitivity and modernity which deserves still to be questioned and disputed. Pruning back our conceptions of the oral and the literate to their stricter denotations, we might hope to see more clearly what areas of medieval studies would benefit from alternative interpretations

Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions 1-4 of His Commentary on the \u27De Trinitate\u27 of Boethius

Reviewed Book: Thomas, Aquinas, Saint. Faith, Reason and Theology: Questions 1-4 of His Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. Toronto: Pontifical Inst of Medieval Studies, 1987

Sons, apprentices and successors in late medieval and early modern London: the transmission of skills and work opportunities

Book synopsis: The existence and changing of generations in family life, business and politics was a central feature of towns as well as rural societies in earlier times. Even so, it remains understudied by urban historians of the pre-modern period. This book aims to fill some of this gap, containing twelve studies of generations in late medieval and early modern European towns, ranging from the Mediterranean to the Nordic countries, with a time-span from the fourteenth to the early nineteenth century. Dealing with topics like succession and inheritance, family consciousness, as well as relations and conflicts within and between generations, the articles demonstrate the importance and potential of generational studies on pre-modern towns. The book will appeal to anyone who takes an interest in urban social and cultural history, legal and family history in medieval and early modern times

All the colours of the rainbow.

Our perception of colour has always been a source of fascination, so it's little wonder that studies of the phenomenon date back hundreds of years. What, though, can modern scientists learn from medieval literature — and how do we go about it

Medieval Icelandic studies

Absract In the field of medieval Icelandic studies, "the oral tradition" refers to the accumulated and encyclopedic knowledge (both sacred and profane) that was passed on from person to person before and after writing was first introduced into the newly Christianized society of Iceland. This tradition commonly used stories and poetry as a medium, as well as special training in the oratorical art of law

Review of periodical articles

[First Paragraph] There is only one true city, wrote St Augustine, and it is not of this world. The pessimistic Christian response to the fall of Rome in AD 410, epitomized in Augustine's City of God, affected the development of the later medieval city to a degree which has yet, even now, to be fully appreciated. In the Christian city of the Middle Ages the divinity was normally confined to the sanctuaries of his churches, whose topographical prominence and harmonious proportions made manifest an otherwise hidden spiritual order. Outside the cloister gates, disorder reigned: a general lack of planning revealed the meaninglessness of the outward, secular life. This dichotomy between an inner world of spirit and a public world of transient matter was embodied in the recurrent tensions between spiritual and secular space which ran as a motif throughout the history of medieval towns. Modern studies which have emphasized (not, of course, without reason) the secular political and economic power of ecclesiastical institutions in the medieval city have perhaps distracted attention unduly from the real differences of ethos which, within the town, distinguished religious space from that of the surrounding lay world