Anthony Colin Spearing (born 31 January 1936) [1] is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at the University of Virginia, specialising in medieval literature. He translated The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works for Penguin Classics. [2]
He was a student at Jesus College, Cambridge, a research fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge [1] and received his M.A. from the University of Cambridge in 1960. [3] He has been a Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge since 1960, and Life Fellow since 1987. [4] He has an honorary Ph.D. from Lund University, Sweden, and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters (Litt.D.) by the University of Cambridge on the 19th July 2014. [5]
Spearing has published numerous books and papers on topics of medieval English literature, including many works on Geoffrey Chaucer. Works by Spearing include:
On the Consolation of Philosophy, often titled as The Consolation of Philosophy or simply the Consolation, is a philosophical work by the Roman philosopher Boethius. Written in 523 while he was imprisoned and awaiting execution by the Ostrogothic King Theodoric, it is often described as the last great Western work of the Classical Period. Boethius' Consolation heavily influenced the philosophy of late antiquity, as well as Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity.
Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh was an English scholar, poet, and author. Raleigh was also a Cambridge Apostle.
The Cloud of Unknowing is an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The text is a spiritual guide on contemplative prayer. The underlying message of this work suggests that the way to know God is to abandon consideration of God's particular activities and attributes, and be courageous enough to surrender one's mind and ego to the realm of "unknowing", at which point one may begin to glimpse the nature of God.
Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer Coghill was an Anglo-Irish literary scholar, known especially for his modern-English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Elizabeth Helen Cooper,, known as Helen Cooper, is a British literary scholar. From 2004 to 2014, she was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Sir James Drummond Bone, FRSE, FRSA, is a Byron scholar and was Master of Balliol College at the University of Oxford until April 2018. He previously served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 2002 to 2008, and Principal of Royal Holloway, University of London, from 2000 to 2002.Currently residing in Fife, Scotland.
Richard Boris Ford, was a literary critic, writer, editor and educationist.
Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly is an Irish Germanist and Founder of WiGS.
Gavin Dennis Flood is a British scholar of comparative religion specialising in Shaivism and phenomenology, but with research interests that span South Asian traditions. From October 2005 through December 2015, he served in the Faculty of Theology University of Oxford and as the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies which is a Recognised Independent Centre of the University of Oxford. In 2008, Flood was granted the title of professor of Hindu studies and comparative religion from the University of Oxford. In 2014, he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2016, Flood became the inaugural Yap Kim Hao Professor of Comparative Religious Studies at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. He is a senior research fellow at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.
Seth Lerer is an American scholar and Professor of English. He specializes in historical analyses of the English language, and in addition to critical analyses of the works of several authors, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Literature at the University of California, San Diego, where he served as the Dean of Arts and Humanities from 2009 to 2014. He previously held the Avalon Foundation Professorship in Humanities at Stanford University. Lerer won the 2010 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism for Children’s Literature: A Readers’ History from Aesop to Harry Potter.
Derek Stanley Brewer was a Welsh medieval scholar, author and publisher.
Piero Boitani is an Italian literary critic.
Michael Lapidge, FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature, particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD; he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the British Academy, and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.
Charles Moseley, who also publishes as C. W. R. D. Moseley, is an English writer, scholar, and teacher, and a former fellow of Wolfson College and Life Fellow of Hughes Hall in Cambridge, as well as a fellow of the English Association, the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the Royal Society of Arts.
Emeritus Professor Phyllis Hodgson (1909–2000) was a Medievalist and translator of medieval texts.
Ardis Butterfield is a scholar of medieval music and literature. She is the Marie Borroff Professor of English, and Professor of Music and French at Yale University United States.
Anne Mary Hudson, was a British literary historian and academic. She was a Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1963 to 2003, and Professor of Medieval English at the University of Oxford from 1989 to 2003.
Gillian Lesley "Jill" Mann, FBA, is a scholar known for her work on medieval literature, especially on Middle English and Medieval Latin.
Christopher Cannon is a medievalist at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of English and Classics, previously Chair of Classics, and from 2020-2024 Vice Dean for the Humanities and Social Sciences in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. His research and writings have focused on the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, early Middle English, and elementary learning in the Middle Ages.
Robert W. Hanning is an American medievalist. He is an emeritus professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.