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Areas of Specialization

Medieval Studies

Medieval literature is a highly productive area of research and teaching in the department, balancing a number of approaches. Faculty and students work on canonical and non-canonical texts and in related fields such as paleography, history of the book, textual editing, and translation. At the same time, their interests regularly take them into literary theory, cultural and social history, intertextuality, and questions of gender and representation.

Penn State offers a rich environment for advanced study. Seminars cover major authors, periods, topics, and emerging areas of inquiry. Graduate students find strong support and mentoring as they develop as scholars and teachers. They present their work at national and regional conferences and publish it in major journals. The department and the college provide competitive funding sources for conference travel and dissertation research. There are opportunities to learn languages in intensive summer programs and to teach courses in medieval literature in English and Comparative Literature. Students in the department regularly work with faculty in sister departments such as Comparative Literature, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, German, History, and Classics. The Center for Medieval Studies sponsors an annual interdisciplinary conference and an exchange program under the World University Network. Penn State Press publishes significant journals and monographs in the field.

Recent Course Offerings in Medieval Literature

  • Chaucer
  • Middle English Literature
  • Medieval to Renaissance: The Early Modern Reception
  • Love and Desire in the Middle Ages
  • Manuscript and Print Culture
  • Old English Language
  • Beowulf
  • History of the English Language

Faculty Publications

Caroline D. Eckhardt (Professor and Head of Comparative Literature)
Books:

  • Castleford's Chronicle, or the Boke of Brut . 2 vols. Early English Text Society (Volume 3 in preparation.)  
  • Chaucer's General Prologue.  New Chaucer Bibliography Series
  • The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth:  A Fifteenth-Century English Commentary.  
  • Editor, Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature.

Recent essays and articles:

  • "Old Fields, New Corn, and Present Ways of Writing about the Past." In Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization: The 2005 ACLA Report on the State of the Discipline , ed. Haun Saussy. Johns Hopkins University Press. Forthcoming.
  • "Reconsidering Malory." In Fortunes of Arthur , ed. Norris J. Lacy. Cambridge: Brewer. Forthcoming.
  • "Arthurian Comedy:  The Simpleton-Hero in Sir Perceval of Galles ." In Perceval/Parzival , ed. Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy. New York: Routledge, 2002.  Pp. 237-52.
  • "Havelok the Dane in Castleford's Chronicle ."  Studies in Philology  98 (2001): 1-17.
  • "Constructing a Medieval Genealogy: Roland the Father of Tristan in Castleford's Chronicle " (with Bryan A. Meer).  MLN 115 (2000): 1085-1111.
  • "Genre."  In A Companion to Chaucer , ed. Peter Brown. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. 180-94.
Robert R. Edwards (Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature)
Books:
  • The Flight from Desire: Augustine and Ovid to Chaucer. Forthcoming.
  • Chaucer and Boccaccio: Antiquity and Modernity. Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2002.
  • The Siege of Thebes. Middle English Texts Series, TEAMS.
  • Troy Book: Selections. Middle English Texts Series, TEAMS.
  • The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in Chaucer's Early Narrative.
  • Ratio and Invention: A Study of Medieval Lyric and Narrative.
  • The Poetry of Guido Guinizelli.
  • The Montecassino Passion and the Poetics of Medieval Drama .
  • Editor, Arts and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr.
  • Co-editor, Matrons and Marginal Women in Medieval Society .
  • Co-editor, The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World .

Recent essays and articles:

  • "Marie de France's Lais and Le livre Ovide ." Special issue on Marie de France in Mediaevalia . Forthcoming.
  • "Ricardian Dreamwork: Chaucer, Cupid, and Loyal Lovers." New Essays on Chaucer's Legend of Good Women , ed. Carolyn Collette. Cambridge: Brewer. Forthcoming.
  • "Performing Boccaccio's 'Questioni d'amore.'" Special issue on performance in the Middle Ages in Mediaevalia . Forthcoming.
  • "Guido Guinizelli." Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz. 2 vols. New York: Routledge, 2004. 1: 479-481.
  • "Translating Thebes: Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and Stow's Chaucer." ELH 70 (2003): 319-41.
  • "Medieval Literary Careers: The Theban Track." European Literary Careers: The Author from Antiquity to the Renaissance , ed. Patrick Cheney and Frederick De Armas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002. Pp. 104-28.
  • "The Franklin's Tale." Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales: Vol. I , ed. Robert Correale and Mary Hamel. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002. Pp. 211-65.
  • "The Metropol and the Mayster-Toun: Cosmopolitanism and Late-Medieval Literary Culture." Cosmopolitan Geographies , ed. Vinay Dharwadker. English Institute Essays 1998. New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. 33-62.
  • "Lydgate's Troy Book and the Confusion of Prudence." The North Sea World , ed. Thomas Liszka and Lorna Walker. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001. Pp. 52-69.
  • "Narrative." Blackwell's Companion to Chaucer , ed. Peter Brown. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. Pp. 312-31.
  • "Rewriting Menedon's Story: Decameron 10.5 and the Franklin's Tale." The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question , ed. Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000. Pp. 226-46.

Scott Thompson Smith (Assistant Professor of English, from Fall 2007)

  • "Of Kings and Cattle Thieves: The Rhetorical Work of the Fonthill Letter," forthcoming in JEGP.
  • Review of A Place to Believe In: Locating Medieval Landscapes, ed. Clare A. Lees and Gillian R. Overing (Penn State Press, 2006), in Religion and Literature, forthcoming.

Dissertations

Jennifer Merriman, Old English eschatology and preaching
Timothy Arner, Genres and the Politics of Authorship in Troy Narratives
Steele Nowlin, Invention and Historiography
Lindsey Jones, "By his common talke": Representations of Linguistic Difference in Medieval and Renaissance Drama.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Graduate Student Publications

Timothy Arner, "No Joke: Transcendent Laughter in the Teseida and the 'Miller's Tale.'" Studies in Philology 102 (2005): 143-58.

Timothy Arner, Introduction, co-authored with Sherry Roush. In Medieval Marriage: Prudence, Passion, Policy, ed. Sherry Roush and Cristelle Baskins. Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies. Forthcoming.

Steele Nowlin, "Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narrative: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis 's 'Middel Weie.'" Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005): 217-44.

Steele Nowlin, "Between Precedent and Possibility: Liminality, Historicity, and Narrative in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale ." Studies in Philology . Forthcoming.

Job Placement
Craig Bertolet, Auburn University
Celeste Patton, Texas Tech University
Larry Beaston, Pennsylvania Technical College
Colin Fewer, Purdue University-Calumet