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Biography and interests

My passion for Medieval French language and literature stems from my undergraduate studies in French and German at Trinity College, Oxford. After graduating in 1995, I remained at Trinity for my M.St. and D.Phil., leaving to take up a lectureship at the University of Manchester in 1998. I returned to Oxford in 2013, to St Peter's College, where I had enjoyed my first medieval French tutorial some twenty years earlier.

My early research focussed particularly on comic and satirical literature, as exemplified by my books The Stereotype of the Priest in the Old French Fabliaux and Two Old French Satires on the Power of the Keys. Over time, I have become increasingly interested in traditional philology, in particular text editing and manuscript studies, and in Anglo-Norman language and literature, as reflected by my editions of the Vie de seint Clement, The Abingdon Apocalypse, and the Anglo-Norman Verse Psalter. I attach particular importance to the study of less well-known or marginal texts, as a result of which my research has dealt with a diverse range of subjects including hagiography, Coronation orders, dance steps, and genital anthropomorphism: the common thread underpinning the apparently random choice of topics resides in the desire to make sense of previously undiscovered or neglected texts. More recently, I have become increasingly interested in the lives of earlier philologists, particularly those whose careers are less well known.

My academic activity is supported by, and would probably be impossible without, my two life-long passions: physical exercise (bodybuilding, powerlifting, running, cycling) and extreme metal and punk (black, death, thrash, D-beat, crust).

Research

Activities

Current work

  • Book: Anglo-Norman Verse Psalter, vol. 3 (of 3) [see below for details]
  • Book (with Anne Yardley) on MS Cambridge, University Library, Ee.6.16, my contribution involving the Anglo-Norman Texts  [Dean 920, 930, 964, 825, 834, 838]
  • Article (with Sommer Hallquist) on the Anglo-Norman Passion text in MS Cambridge, St John's College, K. 21 [Dean 486]
  • Article: Edition and study of the Apocalypse texts in Lambeth 434 and Eton 177
  • Article: 'The revolting body or the body in revolt? The Old French fables of genital anthropomorphism'

Forthcoming projects

  • The Bibliography of Anglo-Norman Texts and Manuscripts (BANTeM): this will be a fully revised and significantly expanded online version of Ruth Dean and Maureen Boulton's Anglo-Norman Literature: a Guide to Texts and Manuscripts. Watch this space!
  • Project: Critical edition and study of the transmission of the French Prose Apocalypse
    A preparatory project involving digitisation and transcription of Anglo-Norman illustrated manuscripts of this text held in the Bodleian Library is being funded as part of the Digital Manuscripts Toolkit initiative
  • Studies of the life and letters of various late 19C / early 20C philologists, including Joseph Herz, Albert Stimming, John Matzke, and Amédée Salmon. I am also developing a project involving the correspondence between Paul Meyer and English ladies including Lucy Toulmin Smith, Ellen Oxenford, and a certain Tiddy.
  • Article: Edition of an unpublished 14C prose life of St Peter
  • Book: An edited collection of marginal obscene Old French texts

Teaching

Undergraduate

My undergraduate teaching is centred on medieval French literature (Papers VI, IX, XII), particularly of the earlier period, and medieval French language (Paper III). Topics that I cover include the chansons de geste, verse romance, fabliaux, lais, historiography, hagiography and further forms of 'religious' literature, and Anglo-Norman literature and language.

Postgraduate

My postgraduate supervision primarily involves Old French and Anglo-Norman literature and language.

I am delighted to receive enquiries from research students seeking supervision in all areas of medieval French and Anglo-Norman language and literature, in particular those coinciding with my research interests. Projects involving interactions with other Romance languages, Middle High German, and Middle English are very welcome.

Publications

Books

Single-authored

  1. Anglo-Norman Verse Psalter, ANTS 79-82, 3 vols. (ANTS, Oxford: 2024-exp. 2026) [vol. I 2024, vii + 244 pp.; vol. II 2025, vi + 243 pp.; vol. 3 in progress]
  2. The Abingdon Apocalypse, ANTS 74 (ANTS: Oxford, 2017), xvi + 168 pp.
  3. The Life of St Clement, French of England Translation Series (ACMRS: Tempe, AZ, 2016), xii + 270 pp.
  4. La Vie de seint Clement, ANTS 64-67, 3 vols. (ANTS: London, 2007-10), xiv + 613 pp. [Awarded the 2011 Prix De La Grange by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres]
  5. Two Old French Satires on the Power of the Keys: 'L'Escommeniement au lecheor' and 'Le Pardon de foutre', Research Monographs in French Studies 18 (Oxford: Legenda, 2005), 145 pp.
  6. The Stereotype of the Priest in the Old French Fabliaux: Anticlerical Satire and Lay Identity (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 265 pp.

Joint-authored

  1. The Val-Dieu Apocalypse, with N. Morgan and K. Griffith (Barcelona: Moleiro, 2020), 426 pp [edition and analyses pp. 169-89, 373-87, 391-4]
  2. The Corpus Apocalypse, MS 20 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge: Commentary to the Facsimile Edition, with N. Morgan, P. Klein, and C. de Hamel (Lucerne: Quaternio Verlag, 2013), 544 pp. [editions and translations pp. 135-247, 417-523]
  3. Apocalipsis Yates Thompson (MS. 10) / Apocalypse Yates Thompson: Libro de estudios / Book of Studies, with N. Morgan and P. Kidd (Madrid: AyN Ediciones, 2010), 195 pp. [edition and translation pp. 23-6, 99-192]

Articles

Peer-reviewed journals

  1. 'Ore suy pris en trebuchet! (Hatton 82): an Anglo-Norman ballade of a battered husband – and fan of Deschamps?' [submitted to Early Modern English]
  2. 'Bone chose: Anglo-Norman lessons from Old Testament lives (Harley MS 209) [accepted by Medium Ævum]
  3. 'La Vie de un vallet amerous (Digby 86): a dramatic monologue on the practice and pitfalls of seduction in medieval Britain – by Richard, author of the Besturné?', Medioevo romanzo 44.2 (2020), 241-80
  4. 'Va, soryte, Deu te maudye! (Egerton 613): on living with mice in medieval Britain', Notes and Queries 67.3 (2020), 333-36
  5. 'Le sengle (Cambridge, Trinity O.3.45): Une contribution anglo-normande à la lexicographie et à l’histoire de la danse', Romania 135 (2017), 181-93
  6. 'The Anglo-Norman Coronation Order of Edward II', Medium Ævum 85 (2016), 278-313
  7. '"Ele boute son doi en son con...”: the question of Anglo-Norman obscenity', Reinardus 27 (2015), 33-57
  8. 'Die anglonormannischen Life of St John the Almsgiver und Vie de seint Clement: Werke ein und desselben Autors?', Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 129 (2013), 1-21
  9. 'Les dits satiriques Des clers et Des vilains: de nouveaux aperçus sur leur transmission et édition', Romania 125 (2007), 118-31
  10. 'Trubert: Transgression, revolution, abjection', Reinardus 19 (2006), 37-52
  11. 'Do Con, do Vet et de la Soriz: édition d’un texte tiré de Berne 354', Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 117 (2001), 23-49
  12. 'Le Chastiement des clers: edition of a dit concerning the Nations of the University of Paris', Medium Ævum 69 (2000), 211-26

Edited volumes

  1. 'Autour de la correspondance de Gaston Paris-Paul Meyer: la question de l’anglo-normand. Suivi par leur correspondance avec Johan Vising et Mildred Pope' [accepted for volume on Gaston Paris emerging from Cerisy-la-Salle conference]
  2. 'The Solaz de un dame (Harley 209): an Anglo-Norman masterpiece of erotic metaphor?', in Medieval French on the Move: Studies in Honour of Keith Busby, ed. L. Tether, P. Moran and A. Salamon (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2025), pp. 51-76
  3. 'Learning from an Anglo-Norman Apocalypse: Oxford, University College MS 100', in Literary Echoes of the Fourth Lateran Council in England and France, 1215–1405, ed. M. Boulton (Toronto: PIMS, 2019), pp. 197-228
  4. 'Vers une nouvelle édition de l'Apocalypse en prose', in Anglo-français: philologie et linguistique, ed. O. Floquet and G. Giannini, Civilisation médiévale 13 (Paris: Garnier, 2015), pp. 9-34
  5. 'Albert Stimming and Anglo-Norman studies', in Bartsch, Foerster et Cie: la première romanistique allemande et son influence en Europe, ed. R. Trachsler (Paris: Garnier, 2013), pp. 265-292
  6. '"Vers la fin croistra la religion": the end of the world according to the Medieval French Prose Apocalypse', in Visions of Apocalypse: Representations of the End in French Literature and Culture, ed. A. Stuart and L. Archer (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 15-42
  7. 'Dean v. 2.0: Towards an online database of Anglo-Norman texts and manuscripts', in Present and Future Research in Anglo-Norman: Aberystwyth Colloquium, July 2011, ed. D. Trotter (Aberystwyth: AND, 2012), pp. 195-98