I am Research Theme Leader in Collections and Culture at the Natural History Museum, London. Before that I held an academic post at Birkbeck, University of London. I took my degrees at the University of York, UK; first in the English department and then in the Centre for Medieval Studies.
If you don't have institutional access to journals and would like a copy of any of the subscription only journal articles, please contact me and I will email you one.
Men and Margery: Negotiating Medieval Patriarch^ ISABEL DAVIS Oure fadres olde & modres l... more Men and Margery: Negotiating Medieval Patriarch^ ISABEL DAVIS Oure fadres olde & modres lyued wel, And taghte hir children as hem self taght were Of holy chirche & asked nat a del 'Why slant this word here?'and'why this word there?' 'Why spake god thus and seith thus elles ...
Medieval people made quick associations between skin as a raw material and the things—especially ... more Medieval people made quick associations between skin as a raw material and the things—especially clothes and writing surfaces—that were fashioned from them. Furthermore, they readily recognized the similarity between their own skin and those of animals that could be thus treated. People’s proximity to and familiarity with the treatment of and trade in skins made its associated terms and techniques ripe for figurative use. This chapter is about the special use that medieval writers made of skin as a metaphor for time. Most obviously, skin ages, yet, in the Middle Ages, skin figuratively substituted for time in a more thorough way. Skin and time were thought to share the same mechanical properties: both could stretch, fold, and tear. Skin gave writers material ways to think about deferment (stretching), anachronism, and replication (both folding), and event (tearing).
While moralists may stress the importance of the proper management of appetite, medieval and earl... more While moralists may stress the importance of the proper management of appetite, medieval and early modern narratives are full of images of monstrous and deformed appetites running out of control. Consuming Narratives examines the significance of these concepts, metaphors and narratives of appetite for understanding gender, politics, race and nation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The essays in this wide-ranging collection consider appetite in relation to sexual and textual consumption, monstrous bodies, and genders, races and nations. Each section is introduced by a leading academic in the field, while individual papers deal with a variety of texts, from the Revelations of Divine Love to Massinger’s The Sea Voyage, and cover topics ranging from trade and colonialism to vampires, witchcraft and the sheela-na-gig figure. Consuming Narratives analyses representations of monstrous appetites, highlights the role of consumption within narrative practices and considers the ways in which appetites and ideas about them contributed to the production of textual, human and national bodies. It will be an essential book for all those interested in the intersections of gender, politics and narrative in the medieval and early modern periods.
Book synopsis: This volume addresses the current fashion for research on the family and domestici... more Book synopsis: This volume addresses the current fashion for research on the family and domesticity in the past. It draws together work from various disciplines - historical, art-historical and literary - with their very different source materials and from a broad geographical area, including some countries - such as Croatia and Poland - which are not usually considered in standard text books on the medieval family. This volume considers the various affective relationships within and around the family and the manner in which those relationships were regulated and ritualized in more public arenas. Despite their disparate approaches and geographical spread, these essays share many thematic concerns; the ideologies which structured gender roles, inheritance rights, incest law and the ethics of domestic violence, for example, are all considered here. This collection originates from the Leeds IMC in 2001 when the special strand was entitled Domus and Familia and attracted huge participation. This book aims to reflect that richness and variety whilst contributing to an expanding area of historical enquiry.
Book synopsis: 'Rites of passage' is a term and concept more used than considered. Here, ... more Book synopsis: 'Rites of passage' is a term and concept more used than considered. Here, for the first time, its implications are applied and tested in the field of medieval studies: medievalists from a range of disciplines consider the various theoretical models - folklorist, anthropological, psychoanalytical - that can be used to analyse cultures of transition in the history and literature of fourteenth-century Europe. Ranging over a wide variety of texts, from chronicles to romances, from priests' manuals to courtesy books, from state records to the writings of Chaucer, Gower and Froissart, the contributors identify and analyse medieval attitudes to the process of change in lifecycle, status, gender and power. A substantive introduction by Miri Rubin draws together the ideas and materials discussed in the book to illustrate the relevance and importance of anthropology to the study of medieval culture.
This article is about calling in late medieval literature, an idea that was most thoroughly insta... more This article is about calling in late medieval literature, an idea that was most thoroughly installed in Christian doctrine by Saint Paul. Unsurprisingly, the Pauline imprint on late medieval writing is marked, but, in contrast, the notion of calling has not been much attended to by medievalists.1 I shall use William Langland’s Piers Plowman, John Gower’s Vox clamantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame and Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in order to show not only an extensive engagement with the theory of calling in the work of three key late medieval English writers but also to demonstrate what was at stake in that engagement. A Pauline turn in recent Continental philosophy has acknowledged and endorsed a significant theological residue within Marxist thinking; in particular, it has rewritten Paul’s doctrine of calling to describe the relationship between individual and Law as intersubjective. In this article, I will use Louis Althusser’s recasting of Paul’s calling as ‘‘inter...
Men and Margery: Negotiating Medieval Patriarch^ ISABEL DAVIS Oure fadres olde & modres l... more Men and Margery: Negotiating Medieval Patriarch^ ISABEL DAVIS Oure fadres olde & modres lyued wel, And taghte hir children as hem self taght were Of holy chirche & asked nat a del 'Why slant this word here?'and'why this word there?' 'Why spake god thus and seith thus elles ...
Medieval people made quick associations between skin as a raw material and the things—especially ... more Medieval people made quick associations between skin as a raw material and the things—especially clothes and writing surfaces—that were fashioned from them. Furthermore, they readily recognized the similarity between their own skin and those of animals that could be thus treated. People’s proximity to and familiarity with the treatment of and trade in skins made its associated terms and techniques ripe for figurative use. This chapter is about the special use that medieval writers made of skin as a metaphor for time. Most obviously, skin ages, yet, in the Middle Ages, skin figuratively substituted for time in a more thorough way. Skin and time were thought to share the same mechanical properties: both could stretch, fold, and tear. Skin gave writers material ways to think about deferment (stretching), anachronism, and replication (both folding), and event (tearing).
While moralists may stress the importance of the proper management of appetite, medieval and earl... more While moralists may stress the importance of the proper management of appetite, medieval and early modern narratives are full of images of monstrous and deformed appetites running out of control. Consuming Narratives examines the significance of these concepts, metaphors and narratives of appetite for understanding gender, politics, race and nation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The essays in this wide-ranging collection consider appetite in relation to sexual and textual consumption, monstrous bodies, and genders, races and nations. Each section is introduced by a leading academic in the field, while individual papers deal with a variety of texts, from the Revelations of Divine Love to Massinger’s The Sea Voyage, and cover topics ranging from trade and colonialism to vampires, witchcraft and the sheela-na-gig figure. Consuming Narratives analyses representations of monstrous appetites, highlights the role of consumption within narrative practices and considers the ways in which appetites and ideas about them contributed to the production of textual, human and national bodies. It will be an essential book for all those interested in the intersections of gender, politics and narrative in the medieval and early modern periods.
Book synopsis: This volume addresses the current fashion for research on the family and domestici... more Book synopsis: This volume addresses the current fashion for research on the family and domesticity in the past. It draws together work from various disciplines - historical, art-historical and literary - with their very different source materials and from a broad geographical area, including some countries - such as Croatia and Poland - which are not usually considered in standard text books on the medieval family. This volume considers the various affective relationships within and around the family and the manner in which those relationships were regulated and ritualized in more public arenas. Despite their disparate approaches and geographical spread, these essays share many thematic concerns; the ideologies which structured gender roles, inheritance rights, incest law and the ethics of domestic violence, for example, are all considered here. This collection originates from the Leeds IMC in 2001 when the special strand was entitled Domus and Familia and attracted huge participation. This book aims to reflect that richness and variety whilst contributing to an expanding area of historical enquiry.
Book synopsis: 'Rites of passage' is a term and concept more used than considered. Here, ... more Book synopsis: 'Rites of passage' is a term and concept more used than considered. Here, for the first time, its implications are applied and tested in the field of medieval studies: medievalists from a range of disciplines consider the various theoretical models - folklorist, anthropological, psychoanalytical - that can be used to analyse cultures of transition in the history and literature of fourteenth-century Europe. Ranging over a wide variety of texts, from chronicles to romances, from priests' manuals to courtesy books, from state records to the writings of Chaucer, Gower and Froissart, the contributors identify and analyse medieval attitudes to the process of change in lifecycle, status, gender and power. A substantive introduction by Miri Rubin draws together the ideas and materials discussed in the book to illustrate the relevance and importance of anthropology to the study of medieval culture.
This article is about calling in late medieval literature, an idea that was most thoroughly insta... more This article is about calling in late medieval literature, an idea that was most thoroughly installed in Christian doctrine by Saint Paul. Unsurprisingly, the Pauline imprint on late medieval writing is marked, but, in contrast, the notion of calling has not been much attended to by medievalists.1 I shall use William Langland’s Piers Plowman, John Gower’s Vox clamantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame and Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale in order to show not only an extensive engagement with the theory of calling in the work of three key late medieval English writers but also to demonstrate what was at stake in that engagement. A Pauline turn in recent Continental philosophy has acknowledged and endorsed a significant theological residue within Marxist thinking; in particular, it has rewritten Paul’s doctrine of calling to describe the relationship between individual and Law as intersubjective. In this article, I will use Louis Althusser’s recasting of Paul’s calling as ‘‘inter...
"Calling" embraces both "summoning" (or "vocation") and "namin... more "Calling" embraces both "summoning" (or "vocation") and "naming," not only in Modern English but also in Middle English (by way of the verb "clepen") and in the Latin "vocare," as used, for instance, in the Vulgate in 1 Corinthians 7:20, the ultimate source for many of the passages that Davis discusses: "Unusquisque in qua vocatione vocatus est, in ea permaneat." Davis explores the notion of "calling" in four late fourteenth-century texts ("Piers Plowman," "Vox Clamantis," "House of Fame," and the "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale"), countering, along the way, Weber's oversimplification of pre-Lutheran notions of "calling," especially with regard to significance of activity in the world and the possibility of salvation for those in secular life. "Instead of earthly names and estates being naturalized, fixed, and God-given, or alternatively, alien and anathema to God, God temporarily suffers imperfect human 'callings' at the same time that he issues his own call. Thus, although human and divine 'callings' are not identical, they are also not necessarily distinguishable and in fact often coincide; as such, the characters within these poems, and sometimes the poems themselves, do not always disambiguate them" (55). Davis's analysis expands to include discussion of "use" vs. "possession" and "precept" vs. "counsel," and it perhaps offers its richest insight into WB and PP, especially where she draws parallels between the Wife and Langland's Will. Her discussion of VC centers on the narrator's role in Book I. Taking issue with those who, conflating poet and narrator, blame Gower for the disturbing allegorical depiction of the revolting peasants as animals in the vision in Book I, Davis emphasizes how "the poem reframes its invective as self-scrutiny" (80). Wisdom, exercising a role similar to that of Conscience in PP C XXI, "alerts the narrator to the call to redemption and does achieve his contrition, which is signaled by his kneeling. This call forces two related recognitions on the part of the narrator: first, that the revolt and storm are divine instruments and, second, that the target of God's displeasure is the narrator himself, who, despite having fled the terrors of revolt, has internalized and carries it within: he is the revolt. . . . In recognition of his own sinfulness, Gower's narrator evacuates the cavities of his heart. This thorough cardiac examination enables him to hear, on or over the wind, the divine voice to which Wisdom has already alerted him. Once the storm has subsided, . . . the narrator kneels in thanks . . . . The narrator's contrition and prayers, which culminate in this act of kneeling, are the turning point around which the whole poem pivots. . . . His own crying to God and God's answering call produce an antiphonal that emerges from, rather than being antithetical to, the tumult of other calls, which together constitute the revolt" (79-81). Elsewhere, Davis describes both the narrator's loss of his own voice and Gower's well-known use of the words of other poets as acts of "kenosis," in imitation of Christ's setting aside of his divinity upon assuming human form, as described by Paul in Philippians 2:5-11 (85-88). She concludes by setting side by side the ending of VC and the close of Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudianus" (91-97), illustrating "a commitment [in Gower's, Langland's, and Chaucer's work] . . . to imagine--although perpetually defer--the spiritual recoverability of the imperfect life" (97). This subtle and wide-ranging essay deserves to be read in full. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2]
This was a talk given for a general audience, rather than medievalists more specifically, as part... more This was a talk given for a general audience, rather than medievalists more specifically, as part of Birkbeck's Arts Week in 2014.
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I recommend that the work is cited in its published French version