School of English, University of Leeds | staff pages
Dr Catherine Batt
Senior Lecturer in Medieval
Literature
email: c.j.batt@leeds.ac.uk
tel: +44(0) 113 343 4758
fax: +44(0) 113 343 4774
room: 9.1.13
Dr Catherine Batt, BA, London; MA, PhD, Liverpool.
For a list of publications since 2001 click here
For a list of publications click here
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 piious 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.
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