School of English
Academic & Teaching staff
Dr Catherine Batt
Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature
+44(0) 113 343 4758
Research
My PhD research was on the subject of English response to French Arthurian cyclic romance, and a concern with multilingual contexts for the production of literature, with translation between languages, and with translation in its broader context of metaphor and poetics, continues to inform my work, as well as an interest in the difference gender makes. My study, Malory's Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (2002), argues that in responding to available literary vernacular Arthurian traditions, Malory transforms constructions of masculine heroism as part of his exposition of the tensions and disillusions of the Arthurian project.
I have published on a range of medieval literature, from twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Saint's Life to Middle English romance, and the work of the Gawain-Poet, Thomas Hoccleve, and Caxton. I am also interested in twentieth-century medievalism.
I am currently completing a translation of Henry, duke of Lancaster's mid-fourteenth-century devotional treatise, Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines (The Book of Holy Medicines) - a wonderfully rich text, which works from a central metaphor of the penitent's wound of sin tended by Christ the divine physician - for the French of England Translation Series. I am also completing work on the Gawain-Poet, writing an article on dying women in Malory, and exploring the interrelation of personification and selfhood in pious and devotional literature in English and in French.
I have supervised and co-supervised PhDs on a range of topics, including Chaucer, Langland, vernacularity, medical and surgical imagery, Middle English poetry, romance, and medievalism, and should be glad to hear from students interested in postgraduate work on these and other medieval areas, including Anglo-Norman literature and multilingualism.
Recent Activities
11 April 2008: Invited speaker, 'Henry, duke of Lancaster's Livre de Seyntz Medicines: Chicken Soup for the Fourteenth-Century Multilingual Soul', Fordham Center for Medieval Studies Spring 2008 lecture series, Rose Hill Campus, The Bronx, NY
18 March 2008: Invited speaker, Medieval Studies Program, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY: 'Psalms, Pomegranates, and the Penitential: Henry, duke of Lancaster's Book of Holy Medicines'
17 March 2008: Invited speaker, Medieval and Renaissance Colloquum, Department of English, Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY: 'Headless Women and Female Suicides: Repetition of Motifs in Malory's Morte Darthur'.
12 February 2008: Invited "Learning Associate", Bates College, Maine: class visit to speak with undergraduates about the theory and practice of writing about Gender Issues in Medieval Literature.
13-14 December 2007: Participation in the Folger Institute Workshop on '"The Second Shepherds' Play" and Early Drama Studies', Washington.
November 2007: Editorial work for The Medieval Translator series (Turnhout: Brepols); reader for journal, Translation and Literature.
July 2007: 'Translations of the Girdle: Cultural and Devotional Signs in Fourteenth-Century England', The Medieval Translator Conference, Lausanne.
July 2007: 'Henry, duke of Lancaster's pious selfhood: Cultural Contexts for the Livre de Seyntz Medicines': The French of England Conference, York.
June 2007: External Examiner, BA English Programme, University of Lampeter.
Teaching
For the academic year 2007-08, I am a Visiting Associate Professor at Fordham University, The Bronx, New York, where I am teaching courses on Medieval Arthurian literature; Shaping Identity in Medieval Devotional Literature; Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, and Medieval dream-vision.