Marion Turner | |
---|---|
Born | 1976 (age 47–48) |
Nationality | British |
Title | J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language |
Awards | for Chaucer: A European Life |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Oxford (BA, DPhil) University of York (MA) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | English literature |
Institutions | Magdalen College,Oxford Jesus College,Oxford Lady Margaret Hall,Oxford |
Main interests | Geoffrey Chaucer |
Notable works | Chaucer:A European Life The Wife of Bath:A Biography |
Marion Turner (born 1976) [1] is the J. R. R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford [2] and an academic authority on Geoffrey Chaucer. [3] [4] She has authored several books,including Chaucer:A European Life, [5] which was shortlisted in 2020 for the Wolfson History Prize,and was a finalist in the PROSE Awards,and for which she was awarded the 2020 Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.
Turner received her MA and DPhil from Oxford University and her MA from the University of York. [6] Her doctoral thesis was supervised by Paul H. Strohm,one of her predecessors in the Tolkien Professorship. [7]
Turner has been a research fellow of the Leverhulme Trust,the Wellcome Trust,and the British Academy. [6] She held a Fellowship by Examination at Magdalen College,Oxford and taught at King's College London before being elected to a Tutorial Fellowship at Jesus College,Oxford in 2007. [8] In 2007,she published the book Chaucerian Conflict,and in 2013,edited A Handbook of Middle English Studies. Chaucer:A European Life was published in 2019. Alison Flood writes in The Guardian ,"Turner's book is the first full biography of Chaucer for a generation,and the first written by a woman." [9] She was elected the J R R Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford in 2022. [10]
Kirkus Reviews describes Chaucer:A European Life,as "A meticulously researched,well-styled academic study" and writes,"Though perhaps too dense for general readers,the book is well-suited to scholars and students of medieval literature." [11] Philip Knox writes for The Review of English Studies ,"Her expansive book is written with an unusual mix of erudition,clarity,and wit:it will be required reading for specialists,an invaluable resource for students,and a rich introduction to Chaucer's world for the general reader." [12]
Alastair Minnis writes for The Spenser Review,"Turner's style is her own –lively,vivid,witty and often chatty,dispensing many delightful confections of information by way of contextualising the few hard facts that are known about the poet's life." [13] Tim Smith-Laing describes Turner for The Telegraph as "Stating her belief that Chaucer's "emotional life [...] is beyond the biographer's reach",she disclaims any attempt to reconstruct the person,and opts,via daunting amounts of original research and scholarly legwork,for the more complex and satisfying task of interrogating how it is that personhood emerges from its place in the world." [14]
Steve Donoghue of Open Letters Monthly writes,"Turner is a smooth,engaging writer and an exhaustive one. She obviously cares about keeping her readers interested (and she herself seems raptly interested throughout),but she's likewise unwilling to skirt,condense,or over-simplify,and she has an enormous story to tell." [15] Stephanie Trigg writes for The Sydney Morning Herald ,"in the context of contemporary English politics it is hard not to see this as an anti-Brexit biography:one that affirms the complex multicultural and multilingual nature of medieval Europe,and England's participation in many of Europe's cultural and literary traditions." [16] Joe Stadolnik writes for the Los Angeles Review of Books ,"The book's deliberate accessibility,and its evocation of a more relatable Chaucer,deserves some praise. But this approach runs a risk,that the same enthusiasm to make Chaucer more accessible will gloss over what makes him uneasily medieval,someone who thought and moved through the world in ways impossibly remote and alien to us." [17]
In a review of The Wife of Bath:A Biography in Literary Review ,Carolyne Larrington writes that Turner "has avoided 'second-book syndrome' with a breathtakingly simple idea:a biography of Chaucer's most famous character,Dame Alison (or Alice),[...],better known as the Wife of Bath. Informative,clear-sighted,entertaining and as opinionated as its subject,Turner's new book is a wonderful introduction to the lives of 14th-century women,The Canterbury Tales and the fascinating ways in which Alison has been read and misread". [10]
In The Guardian ,Katy Guest writes,"this book is an intriguing combination of the fantastically bawdy and the deadly serious. It contains all the academic throat-clearing you might expect from a dissertation ("In this second half of this biography,I trace …";"as the rest of this chapter will discuss …"),and all the forensic research,too." [18] A review by Mary Wellesley in The Telegraph gives the book 5 out of 5 stars and states,"Turner's wonderful new "biography" of Alison shows how radical she was in her time,and explains why she has proved so popular across the ages and in novel cultural contexts." [19]
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet,author,and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature",or,alternatively,the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner,in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer,composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son,Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat,courtier,diplomat,and member of parliament.
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist,essayist,and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000),immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" is among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It provides insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and was probably of interest to Chaucer himself,for the character is one of his most developed ones,with her Prologue twice as long as her Tale. He also goes so far as to describe two sets of clothing for her in his General Prologue. She holds her own among the bickering pilgrims,and evidence in the manuscripts suggests that although she was first assigned a different,plainer tale—perhaps the one told by the Shipman—she received her present tale as her significance increased. She calls herself both Alyson and Alys in the prologue,but to confuse matters these are also the names of her 'gossib',whom she mentions several times,as well as many female characters throughout The Canterbury Tales.
Claire Tomalin is an English journalist and biographer known for her biographies of Charles Dickens,Thomas Hardy,Samuel Pepys,Jane Austen and Mary Wollstonecraft.
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes,it often makes use of formal constraints,including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures,dialects,voices;between page and stage." In 2017,she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Dame Hermione Lee,is a British biographer,literary critic and academic. She is a former President of Wolfson College,Oxford,and a former Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature in the University of Oxford and Professorial Fellow of New College. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Literature.
Dame Marina Sarah Warner,is an English historian,mythographer,art critic,novelist and short story writer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications,including The London Review of Books,the New Statesman,Sunday Times, and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor,given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities.
The Canterbury Tales is a 1972 medieval erotic black comedy Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini based on the medieval narrative poem by Geoffrey Chaucer. The second film in Pasolini's "Trilogy of Life",preceded by The Decameron and followed by Arabian Nights,it won the Golden Bear at the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival.
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.
Mary Eliza Haweis,née Joy was a British author of books and essays,particularly for women,and a scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer,illustrator and painter. The daughter of genre and portrait painter,Thomas Musgrave Joy,she was known for her art and literature. In her early life,she mainly focused on painting,drawing,and illustrating. Her artwork can be seen featured in her husband's works. After marriage,she became versed in literature and history. She both wrote and designed the covers of her own books. Some of her published works include Chaucer for Children (1877),Chaucer for Schools (1881),The Art of Beauty (1878),The Art of Dress (1879),The Art of Decoration (1881),and The Art of Housekeeping (1889),Beautiful Houses (1882),A Flame of Fire (1897). The genres of her work include journalism,politics,philosophy,essays,and fiction novels. She also left many printed articles and papers in manuscript on various subjects.
Richard Peter Treadwell Davenport-Hines is a British historian and literary biographer,and a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College,Oxford.
Mark Mazower is a British historian. His areas of expertise are Greece,the Balkans,and more generally,20th-century Europe. He is Ira D. Wallach Professor of History at Columbia University in New York City.
Chaucer's influence on 15th-century Scottish literature began towards the beginning of the century with King James I of Scotland. This first phase of Scottish "Chaucerianism" was followed by a second phase,comprising the works of Robert Henryson,William Dunbar,and Gavin Douglas. At this point,England has recognised Scotland as an independent state following the end of the Wars of Scottish Independence in 1357. Because of Scottish history and the English’s recent involvement in that history,all of these writers are familiar with the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The Rose Mary Crawshay Prize is a literary prize for female scholars,inaugurated in 1888 by the British Academy.
Rose Mary Crawshay (1828–1907) was a British philanthropist. She commissioned free libraries and a non-fiction prize for women.
Frances Wilson is an English author,academic,and critic.
Hannah Sullivan is a British academic and poet. She is the author of The Work of Revision,which won the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize and the University English Book Prize,as well as the poetry collection Three Poems,which won the T. S. Eliot Prize. She is associate professor of English literature at New College,Oxford
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.
Mary Ethel Seaton was a British scholar of English literature,specialising in the late middle ages. She was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,and twice winner of the Rose Mary Crawshay Prize.
Rose Mary Freeman was a British scholar of English literature,a reader at Birkbeck College,and a specialist in Edmund Spenser. She won the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1951.