Editor-in-Chief
Peter Brown, Professor
Email address:
pb2@kent.ac.uk
Academic History
I am currently Professor of Medieval English Literature at
the University of Kent.
I have also taught at the University of Exeter,
University of Connecticut at Storrs, and the University of California at Los
Angeles.
I am a member of the Early English Text Society, Society for the
Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature, Medieval Academy of America,
Modern Language Association of America, and Fulbright
Association.
Research Interests
I have just finished a book on Chaucer and the making of
optical space. It examines narrative space in a range of texts by Chaucer,
making use of Henri Lefebvre’s notion that individuals and cultures
produce different kinds of space according to their needs and circumstances. It
argues that Chaucer’s understanding and manipulation of narrative space
is affected by the medieval science of optics, or perspectiva, as
transmitted through scholarly treatises, encyclopedias, sermons and vernacular
literature. My next book-length project is a biography of Chaucer, commissioned
by Oxford University Press.
Other research interests have included
dreams, visual culture, literature and place, and historiography.
Selected Publications
Books
- A Companion to Medieval English
Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500 (Blackwell, 2007)
- with Michael
Irwin Literature and Place 1800-2000 (Peter Lang, 2006)
- A
Companion to Chaucer (Blackwell, 2000)
- Reading Dreams: The
Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Oxford University
Press, 1999)
- Chaucer at Work: The Making of the Canterbury Tales
(Longman, 1994)
- with Andrew Butcher The Age of Saturn: Literature and
History in the Canterbury Tales (Blackwell, 1991)
- The Index of
Middle English Prose, Handlist 5: British Library Additional Manuscripts
10001-12000 (Brewer, 1988)
Some Recent Chapters and
Articles:
Topics covered in various essays and articles include:
-
guides to Chaucer
- the literary identity of Canterbury from the Middle
Ages to the present day
medieval privies and the Miller's Tale
- the
Hengwrt manuscript of the Canterbury Tales
- the iconography of the
Castle of Jalousie in the Romance of the Rose
- a scientific treatise on
the Seven Planets
- pilgrimage and the prologue to the Tale of Beryn
Higden's Polychronicon.
