I'm an Associate Professor of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Before that I was at the University of Denver, and before that I was the New Chaucer Society Postdoctoral Fellow and a Visiting Assistant Professor at Saint Louis University. I graduated from UC Berkeley where I was PhD student in English and Medieval Studies with a Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.
I'm working on two books: one on responses to the aesthetics of incompleteness in the Canterbury Tales and one on medieval horror.
In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how ... more In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how poetic coteries formed and maintained the English literary tradition. Perry shows that, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Edmund Spenser, the poets who bridged the medieval and early modern periods created a profusion of coterie forms as they sought to navigate their relationships with their contemporaries and to the vernacular literary traditions that preceded them.
Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. From Geoffrey Chaucer’s associations with both his fellow writers in London and with his geographically distant French contemporaries, to Thomas Hoccleve’s emphatic insistence that he was “aqweyntid” with Chaucer even after Chaucer’s death, to John Lydgate’s formations of “virtual coteries” of a wide range of individuals alive and dead who can only truly come together on the page, the book traces how writers formed the English literary tradition by signaling social connections.
By forming coteries, both real and virtual, based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping and reshaping it accordingly. Perry shows how our notion of the English literary tradition came to be and how it could be imagined otherwise.
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle ... more The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today.
The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of h... more The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of his twenty-five year captivity in England after Agincourt, requires a larger lens than that of Chaucerianism, through which it has most often been viewed. A fresh view from another perspective, one that attends to form and style, as well as to the poet's French traditions, reveals a more conceptually complex and innovative kind of poetry than we have seen until now. The essays collected here reassess him in the light of recent work in Middle English studies. They detail those qualities that make his text one of the most accomplished and moving of the late Middle Ages: Charles's use of English, his metrical play, his felicity with formes fixes lyrics, his innovative use of the dits structure and lyric sequences, and finally, above all, his ability to write beautiful poetry. Overall, they bring out the underappreciated contribution made by Charles to the canon of English poetry.
This essay discusses the fart joke that ends Geoffrey Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale." It argues that... more This essay discusses the fart joke that ends Geoffrey Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale." It argues that the joke uses the language of medieval philosophy to satirize the work of medieval Scholastic philosophers. The essay begins by examining Chaucer's relationship to philosophy more broadly and the scholarly controversies over Chau-cer's familiarity with this field of knowledge. It focuses on the way Chaucer uses disciplinary specific jargon from philosophy, and from medieval logic more particularly, in "The Summoner's Tale." The language and content of the joke in "The Sum-moner's Tale" are a burlesque play on the interests of the Merton Calculators, who used the logical thinking Scholasticism had developed in response to theological problems to investigate problems associated with natural philosophy. Chaucer's joke reveals the way that the logical work of philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and the Merton Calculators relies on formal qualities more closely associated with literature, namely, character and narrative. In making a case that literature and logic rely on these same formal structures, Chaucer affirms literature's capacity to present examples, concrete manifestations of philosophical or logical problems. He suggests that logic is attempting to make stories to work out problems, something that literature can do more effectively.
Due to the resignation of its former editor, and a turnover of contributors, this chapter has few... more Due to the resignation of its former editor, and a turnover of contributors, this chapter has fewer contributors than previously. It is hoped to catch up subsequently with missing areas and to include them retrospectively. The chapter has nine sections: 1. Theory; 2. Manuscript and Textual Studies; 3. Religious Prose; 4. Piers Plowman; 5. Romance: Metrical, Alliterative, Prose; 6. Gower; 7. Hoccleve and Lydgate; 8. Older Scots; 9. Drama. Section 1 is by R.D. Perry; section 2 is by Daniel Sawyer; section 3 is by Niamh Pattwell; section 4 is by Joel Grossman; section 5 is by Anna Dow; section 6 is by Yoshiko Kobayashi; section 7 is by Xiaoling Wu; section 8 is by Kate Ash-Irisarri; section 9 is by Daisy Black and Sarah Brazil.
Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages , 2022
Introduction to *Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages* Cambridg... more Introduction to *Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages* Cambridge University Press, 2022.
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.
In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how ... more In Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition, R. D. Perry reveals how poetic coteries formed and maintained the English literary tradition. Perry shows that, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Edmund Spenser, the poets who bridged the medieval and early modern periods created a profusion of coterie forms as they sought to navigate their relationships with their contemporaries and to the vernacular literary traditions that preceded them.
Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. From Geoffrey Chaucer’s associations with both his fellow writers in London and with his geographically distant French contemporaries, to Thomas Hoccleve’s emphatic insistence that he was “aqweyntid” with Chaucer even after Chaucer’s death, to John Lydgate’s formations of “virtual coteries” of a wide range of individuals alive and dead who can only truly come together on the page, the book traces how writers formed the English literary tradition by signaling social connections.
By forming coteries, both real and virtual, based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping and reshaping it accordingly. Perry shows how our notion of the English literary tradition came to be and how it could be imagined otherwise.
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle ... more The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today.
The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of h... more The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of his twenty-five year captivity in England after Agincourt, requires a larger lens than that of Chaucerianism, through which it has most often been viewed. A fresh view from another perspective, one that attends to form and style, as well as to the poet's French traditions, reveals a more conceptually complex and innovative kind of poetry than we have seen until now. The essays collected here reassess him in the light of recent work in Middle English studies. They detail those qualities that make his text one of the most accomplished and moving of the late Middle Ages: Charles's use of English, his metrical play, his felicity with formes fixes lyrics, his innovative use of the dits structure and lyric sequences, and finally, above all, his ability to write beautiful poetry. Overall, they bring out the underappreciated contribution made by Charles to the canon of English poetry.
This essay discusses the fart joke that ends Geoffrey Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale." It argues that... more This essay discusses the fart joke that ends Geoffrey Chaucer's "Summoner's Tale." It argues that the joke uses the language of medieval philosophy to satirize the work of medieval Scholastic philosophers. The essay begins by examining Chaucer's relationship to philosophy more broadly and the scholarly controversies over Chau-cer's familiarity with this field of knowledge. It focuses on the way Chaucer uses disciplinary specific jargon from philosophy, and from medieval logic more particularly, in "The Summoner's Tale." The language and content of the joke in "The Sum-moner's Tale" are a burlesque play on the interests of the Merton Calculators, who used the logical thinking Scholasticism had developed in response to theological problems to investigate problems associated with natural philosophy. Chaucer's joke reveals the way that the logical work of philosophers like Thomas Aquinas and the Merton Calculators relies on formal qualities more closely associated with literature, namely, character and narrative. In making a case that literature and logic rely on these same formal structures, Chaucer affirms literature's capacity to present examples, concrete manifestations of philosophical or logical problems. He suggests that logic is attempting to make stories to work out problems, something that literature can do more effectively.
Due to the resignation of its former editor, and a turnover of contributors, this chapter has few... more Due to the resignation of its former editor, and a turnover of contributors, this chapter has fewer contributors than previously. It is hoped to catch up subsequently with missing areas and to include them retrospectively. The chapter has nine sections: 1. Theory; 2. Manuscript and Textual Studies; 3. Religious Prose; 4. Piers Plowman; 5. Romance: Metrical, Alliterative, Prose; 6. Gower; 7. Hoccleve and Lydgate; 8. Older Scots; 9. Drama. Section 1 is by R.D. Perry; section 2 is by Daniel Sawyer; section 3 is by Niamh Pattwell; section 4 is by Joel Grossman; section 5 is by Anna Dow; section 6 is by Yoshiko Kobayashi; section 7 is by Xiaoling Wu; section 8 is by Kate Ash-Irisarri; section 9 is by Daisy Black and Sarah Brazil.
Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages , 2022
Introduction to *Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages* Cambridg... more Introduction to *Thinking of the Medieval: Midcentury Intellectuals and the Middle Ages* Cambridge University Press, 2022.
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.
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Books by R. D. Perry
J. A. BURROW † ‘The Two Dreams of Charles d’Orléans and the Structure of His English Book’
ELIZAVETA STRAKHOV ‘Charles d’Orléans’s Cross-Channel Poetics: The Choice of Ballade Form in Fortunes Stabilnes’
JENNI NUTTALL ‘The English Roundel, Charles’s Jubilee, and Mimetic Form’
B. S. W. BAROOTES ‘A Grieving Lover: The Work of Mourning in Charles’s First Ballade Sequence’
ERIC WEISKOTT’ Charles d’Orléans’s English Metrical Phonology’
AD PUTTER ‘The English Poetry of a Frenchman: Stress and Idiomaticity in Charles d’Orléans’
RICHARD INGHAM ‘Verb Use in Charles d’Orléans’s English’
JEREMY J. SMITH ‘Charles d’Orléans and His Finding of English’
ANDREA DENNY-BROWN ‘Charles d’Orléans’s Aureation?’
SIMON HOROBIN ‘Charles d’Orléans, Harley 682, and the London Booktrade’
PHILIP KNOX ‘The Form of the Whole’
Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. From Geoffrey Chaucer’s associations with both his fellow writers in London and with his geographically distant French contemporaries, to Thomas Hoccleve’s emphatic insistence that he was “aqweyntid” with Chaucer even after Chaucer’s death, to John Lydgate’s formations of “virtual coteries” of a wide range of individuals alive and dead who can only truly come together on the page, the book traces how writers formed the English literary tradition by signaling social connections.
By forming coteries, both real and virtual, based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping and reshaping it accordingly. Perry shows how our notion of the English literary tradition came to be and how it could be imagined otherwise.
Papers by R. D. Perry
Reviews by R. D. Perry
Book Chapters by R. D. Perry
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.
J. A. BURROW † ‘The Two Dreams of Charles d’Orléans and the Structure of His English Book’
ELIZAVETA STRAKHOV ‘Charles d’Orléans’s Cross-Channel Poetics: The Choice of Ballade Form in Fortunes Stabilnes’
JENNI NUTTALL ‘The English Roundel, Charles’s Jubilee, and Mimetic Form’
B. S. W. BAROOTES ‘A Grieving Lover: The Work of Mourning in Charles’s First Ballade Sequence’
ERIC WEISKOTT’ Charles d’Orléans’s English Metrical Phonology’
AD PUTTER ‘The English Poetry of a Frenchman: Stress and Idiomaticity in Charles d’Orléans’
RICHARD INGHAM ‘Verb Use in Charles d’Orléans’s English’
JEREMY J. SMITH ‘Charles d’Orléans and His Finding of English’
ANDREA DENNY-BROWN ‘Charles d’Orléans’s Aureation?’
SIMON HOROBIN ‘Charles d’Orléans, Harley 682, and the London Booktrade’
PHILIP KNOX ‘The Form of the Whole’
Rather than defining coteries solely as historical communities of individuals sharing work, Perry reframes them as products of authors signaling associations with one another across time and space, in life and on the page. From Geoffrey Chaucer’s associations with both his fellow writers in London and with his geographically distant French contemporaries, to Thomas Hoccleve’s emphatic insistence that he was “aqweyntid” with Chaucer even after Chaucer’s death, to John Lydgate’s formations of “virtual coteries” of a wide range of individuals alive and dead who can only truly come together on the page, the book traces how writers formed the English literary tradition by signaling social connections.
By forming coteries, both real and virtual, based on shared appreciation of a literary tradition, these authors redefine what should be valued in that tradition, shaping and reshaping it accordingly. Perry shows how our notion of the English literary tradition came to be and how it could be imagined otherwise.
The mid-twentieth century gave rise to a rich array of new approaches to the study of the Middle Ages by both professional medievalists and those more well-known from other pursuits, many of whom continue to exert their influence over politics, art, and history today. Attending to the work of a diverse and transnational group of intellectuals – Hannah Arendt, Erich Auerbach, W. E. B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, Erwin Panofsky, Simone Weil, among others – the essays in this volume shed light on these thinkers in relation to one another and on the persistence of their legacies in our own time. This interdisciplinary collection gives us a fuller and clearer sense of how these figures made some of their most enduring contributions with medieval culture in mind. Thinking of the Medieval is a timely reminder of just how vital the Middle Ages have been in shaping modern thought.