Research Interests

Premodern Ecology, Sound, and Translation

My first monograph Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts highlights how thinking about sound unsettles fixed assumptions about language in relation to the animal in medieval textual cultures. My work explores the themes of animal sound, noise and language in medieval French and English literature written in Anglo-Norman England, including glossaries and treatises, bestiaries, hagiography, fables, lyric and song. Animal Soundscapes challenges theoretical assumptions in contemporary animal studies by focusing on how language and sound expression is used to redefine networks of relation between humans and nonhumans in the Middle Ages. I consider the ways that texts from the Middle Ages, including the Fables by Marie de France and the Life of Saint Francis of Assisi, use the sounds of beasts and birds to reinforce human exceptionalism whilst simultaneously placing the noises of different creatures back into the mouths of human audiences.

My next project considers how ecological crisis and sustainability are represented for diverse audiences in medieval texts that feature motifs such as Creation and the Flood, animal life and transformation, and management of the environment. My research looks into these themes in light of contemporary discussions in anthropology, critical race studies, ecocriticism, and the the translation of science. I am also interested in questions of sound and music, poetry and performance, and the Environmental Humanities.

Publications

Monographs

Animal Soundscapes in Anglo-Norman Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022)

Articles and Book Chapters

'Sloughing the Lion in Villard de Honnecourt’s Sketchbook’, Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes (forthcoming, 2023).
‘Posthuman Bears: Agency in Premodern Bear Baiting in Britain’, in Oliver Grimm (ed.), Bear and Human: Facets of a Multi-Layered Relationship from Past to Recent Times with an Emphasis on Northern Europe (book chapter in preparation, print 2023).
'Rewilding with the 'Cri' in Medieval French Texts: Yvain and Mélusine', French Studies, 77.4 (forthcoming, 2023).
'Noise on the Ocean Before "Pollution": the Voyage of Saint Brendan', Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, 29.3 (2022).
'Animal Umwelt and Sound Milieus in the Middle English Physiologus', Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory, 3.29 (2022).
‘Adeliza of Louvain: Patronage and the Emergence of the French of England’, in English Consorts: Power, Influence, Dynasty, ed. by Aidan Norrie, Carolyn Harris, Joanna Laynesmith, Danna Messer, and Elena Woodacre (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2022).
‘Quacktrap: Glosses and Multilingual Animal Contact in the Tretiz by Walter of Bibbesworth’ in Words in the Middle Ages, ed. by Vincent Debiais and Victoria Turner (forthcoming: Brepols, 2019).
‘Wolfe Yollez’, The Learned Pig (‘Wolf Crossing’ editorial season, online journal, 2017).

Book reviews

Review: Animal Languages in the Middle Ages: Representations of Interspecies Communication, ed. by Alison Langdon, Medium Aevum (forthcoming, 2019).
Review: Sarah Kay, ‘Animal Skins and the Reading Self in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries’, French Studies, 72 (2018).
Review: Jameson S. Workman, ‘Chaucer and the Death of the Political Animal’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 38 (2017).
Review: Paul Webster, ‘King John and Religion’, The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 64.4 (2016).
Review: Miranda Griffin, ‘Transforming Tales: Rewriting Metamorphosis in Medieval French Literature’, French Studies, 70.3 (2016).

Get in Touch

07584329496

liamgillewis@gmail.com