Academic & Teaching staff

Dr Ros Brown-Grant

Senior Lecturer

Dr Ros Brown-Grant

0113 343 3491

Biography

I graduated in French and Italian from the University of Manchester in 1986 and was awarded my PhD, on the works in defence of women by the late medieval author Christine de Pizan, from the University of Manchester in 1994. My specialist teaching at undergraduate level is on the history of the French language and medieval French literature, and at postgraduate level on medieval debates about women.

Supervision

I could offer research supervision in: all aspects of medieval literature, manuscript studies, iconography, gender/sexuality in the Middle Ages. 

Publications

My research has focused to date on four main areas: Christine de Pizan, late medieval French romance, Burgundian historical writing, and text/image relations in late medieval French literature.

In the first of these areas, I have published a monograph, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), a translation of Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1999), and many articles including, most recently:

  • "Christine de Pizan: feminist linguist avant la lettre?", in Christine de Pizan 2000: Studies in Honour of Angus J. Kennedy, ed. John Campbell and Nadia Margolis (Amsterdam; Rodopi, 2000), pp. 65-76.
  • "Writing beyond gender: Christine de Pizan's linguistic strategies in the defence of women", in Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow 21-27 July 2000), published in honour of Liliane Dulac, ed. Angus J. Kennedy, with Rosalind Brown-Grant, James C. Laidlaw and Catherine M. Müller, 3 vols (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2002), vol. I, pp. 155-70.
  • "Mirroring the court: Clerkly advice to noble men and women in the works of Philippe de Mézières and Christine de Pizan", in Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture: Selected Papers from the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Universität Tübingen, Deutschland 28. Juli-3. August 2001, ed. Christoph Huber and Henrike Lähnemann (Tübingen: Attempto Verlag, 2002), pp. 39-56.
  • "Christine de Pizan as a defender of women", in Christine de Pizan: A Casebook, ed. Barbara K. Altmann and Deborah L. McGrady (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 81-100.

In the second of these research areas, I have recently published a monograph entitled French Romance of the Later Middle Ages: Gender, Morality, and Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). This project was supported by a Major Research Fellowship awarded by the Leverhulme Trust from October 2004-October 2006. The following articles have also arisen from this research project: 

  • "Learning to be a good husband: competing masculine identities in the Roman du Comte d'Artois", Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales (XIIIe-XVe siècles), 9 (2002), pp. 179-197.
  • "Les rapports de force dans la liaison amoureuse chez Christine de Pizan, Alain Chartier et Antoine de La Sale", in L'Analisi Linguistica e Letteraria, 12 (2004), Actes du IIème Colloque International sur la Littérature en Moyen Français, ed. Sergio Cigada, Anna Slerca, Giovanna Bellati, Monica Barsi (Milan: Pubblicazioni dell'Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore),  pp. 593-611.
  • "Ré-écritures de récits d'inceste: Jehan Wauquelin et la légende de la 'fille aux mains coupées", in Jean Wauquelin, de Mons à la cour de Bourgogne, ed. Marie-Claude de Crécy, with Gabriella Parussa and Sandrine Hériché Pradeau (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 111-122.
  • "Gérard de Nevers: a Roman de la Violette moralisé? Mise en prose and the revalorisation of the courtly lady in the 'cycle de la gageure"', in Essays in later medieval French literature. The legacy of Jane H. M. Taylor, ed. Rebecca Dixon, Durham Modern Languages Series (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), pp. 21-34.  
  • 'Mise en prose et remise en question du rôle de l'amour dans la formation de l'identité chevaleresque: l'exemple de Blancandin', in Mettre en prose aux XIVe-XVIe siècles, ed. Maria Colombo Timelli, Barbara Ferrari, Anne Schoysman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 87-96.
  •  "The three versions of Paris et Vienne", Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes (XIIIe-XVe s.), 20, (2010), pp. 59-70.

The third of these research areas involves an ongoing large-scale project provisionally entitled Narration as Commemoration in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Historical Writing, which has been supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the form of funding for research leave taken from February - June 2010.  In connection with this project, I was a participant in the Voices in Medieval French Narrative Symposium organised by Dr Helen Swift and Dr Sophie Marnette at the University of Oxford from September 2008 - September 2009, which was funded by the British Academy.  In addition to papers on this research topic given at this symposium and at the Cambridge Medieval Seminar (October 2010), the following articles have either appeared or are forthcoming:

  • "Narrrative style in Burgundian chronicles of the later Middle Ages", Viator, 42,2 (2011), pp. 233-82.
  • "Narrative voice and hybrid style in chivalric biography", Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes (XIIIe-XVe s.), 22 (2011), pp. 25-41.
  • "Narrative style in Burgundian prose romances of the later Middle Ages", forthcoming in Romania in 2012, 52 pp.

In the fourth of these research areas, I am currently embarked on a number of projects relating to text/image relations in late medieval French literature, of which the most important eventual output will be a monograph on the manuscripts of late medieval romances illustrated by the artist known as the 'Wavrin Master' who worked for the Burgundian chronicler, nobleman and bibliophile Jean de Wavrin. 

I am the co-organiser with Dr Rebecca Dixon (French, University of Leeds) of the Text/Image Relations in Late Medieval French Culture (14th c. -16th c.) research network which is funded by the British Academy and has held a series of symposia at the Leeds Humanities Research Institute from January 2011 to January 2012: see http://textimagerelations.wordpress.com.

During 2011-12, I will be on a Research Fellowship at LE STUDIUM, Institute of Advanced Studies, Orléans, France, working on a project on Textual and Visual Representations of Law, Literature and Power in Late Medieval French Romances. For news of a conference that I am organising as part of this project, please see:  http://lestudium.cnrs-orleans.fr/francais/rubriques/actu/conferences/conf_brown/announcement.pdf