Medieval Writers
This page presents a "gallery" of medieval writers whose work I am currently invested in teaching, thinking, or writing about. For brief overviews of their lives and works, along with some suggestions for further reading, explore the links below.
I am, of course, aware that Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, and other postmodern theorists have often declared that the author is dead, and I take their point well; I am continuously wary of the biographical fallacy. On the other hand, there are often many insights to be gleaned from medieval texts when we begin to rehearse what biographical facts we know about a writer's life. An orientation to the intellectual backgrounds, cultural milieux, and professed ambitions of any medieval writer is an exceedingly useful preliminary to deeper engagement with the texts themselves. My hope is that the links here will lead interested parties to further reading and to consideration (and enjoyment!) of the texts these various writers—poets, mystics, historians, philosophers, theologians— produced and of the rich variety of the medieval imagination.
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