Sebastian Sobecki | |
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Occupation(s) | Professor of Later Medieval English Literature, University of Toronto |
Awards | Morton W. Bloomfield Fellowship, Harvard University (2022); Visiting Fellowship, Magdalen College, University of Oxford (2021); H.P. Kraus Fellowship in Early Books and Manuscripts, Yale University (2019); Visiting Fellowship, All Souls College, University of Oxford (2016); John Hurt Fisher Prize, John Gower Society (2016); Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Huntington Library (2015); Professorship of Old Germanic (by courtesy), University of Groningen (2011) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Cambridge |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Medieval and Tudor Literature,1350-1600 |
Institutions | University of Toronto,McGill University,University of Groningen |
Website | https://www.english.utoronto.ca/people/directories/all-faculty/sebastian-sobecki |
Sebastian Sobecki (born 1973) is a medievalist specialising in English literature,history,and manuscript studies.
Sobecki is Professor of Later Medieval English Literature at the University of Toronto. Prior to that,he was Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture at the University of Groningen,the oldest chair (founded in 1886) for English literature in the Netherlands. [1] At Groningen he also held by courtesy the Professorship of Old Germanic,established in 1881. Having received his education at the University of Cambridge,Sobecki became an Assistant Professor at McGill University before being appointed at Groningen. He works on late medieval English literature,particularly on literary history;handwriting,archives,and manuscripts;authorship and literary culture;law and literature;political writing and intellectual history;and travel and global medieval literature. Sobecki was awarded the John Hurt Fisher Prize by the John Gower Society and has held fellowships from Harvard University,Yale University,All Souls College Oxford,Magdalen College Oxford,and the Huntington Library. [2] [3]
Sobecki has written widely on medieval and early modern topics,and his articles have appeared in leading journals,including Speculum, English Literary History , Studies in the Age of Chaucer ,Renaissance Studies, The English Historical Review , The Chaucer Review ,The Library,New Medieval Literatures,and The Review of English Studies . [4] Together with Michelle Karnes (University of Notre Dame),Sobecki is the editor of the periodical Studies in the Age of Chaucer. [5] Sobecki is also editing Medieval Travel Writing:A Global History (Cambridge University Press). [6]
He has made a number of important archival discoveries,such as identifying John Gower's autograph hand, [7] finding a letter written for Margery Kempe's son, [8] locating rebels linked to Piers Plowman , [9] revealing the author (John Peyton) of the earliest English description of Poland, [10] [11] and demonstrating connections between tax records and the General Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales . [12] Together with Euan Roger of the UK's National Archives,he published two new life records that show that Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne were not on opposing sides of the law in the spring of 1380 but co-defendants in a labour dispute. [13] Sobecki is also the voice behind the popular video recording of John Skelton's 'Speke Parott'. [14] [15]
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
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.
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus.
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and the Pearl Poet, and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which are united by common moral and political themes.
Margery Kempe was an English Christian mystic, known for writing through dictation The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. Her book chronicles her domestic tribulations, her extensive pilgrimages to holy sites in Europe and the Holy Land, as well as her mystical conversations with God. She is honoured in the Anglican Communion, but has not been canonised as a Catholic saint.
Walter William Skeat, was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in the United Kingdom.
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves.
Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368/69–1426) was a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, significant for promoting Chaucer as "the father of English literature", and as a poet in his own right. His poetry, especially his longest work, the didactic work Regement of Princes, was extremely popular in the fifteenth century, but went largely ignored until the late twentieth century, when it was re-examined by scholars, particularly John Burrow. Today he is most well known for his Series, which includes the earliest autobiographical description of mental illness in English, and for his extensive scribal activity. Three holographs of his poetry have survived, and he also copied literary manuscripts by other writers. As a clerk of the Office of the Privy Seal, he wrote hundreds of documents in French and Latin.
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars.
The Book of Margery Kempe is a medieval text attributed to Margery Kempe, an English Christian mystic and pilgrim who lived at the turn of the fifteenth century. It details Kempe's life, her travels, her accounts of divine revelation including her visions of interacting with the Trinity, particularly Jesus, as well as other biblical figures. These interactions take place through a strong, mental connection forged between Kempe and said biblical figures. The book is also notable for her claiming to be present at key biblical events such as the Nativity, shown in chapter six of Book I, and the Crucifixion.
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English poem by John Gower, which uses the confession made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus as a frame story for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II. It stands with the works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th-century English literature. The Index of Middle English Verse shows that in the era before the printing press it was one of the most-often copied manuscripts along with Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman.
James Simpson is an Australian-British-American medievalist currently serving as the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University.
The Trinity Gower D Scribe, often referred to simply as Scribe D, was a professional scribe and copyist of literary manuscripts active during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century in London, England. Although his real name long remained unknown, Scribe D has been described as "so well known to students of late Middle English manuscripts that he hardly needs any introduction".
David Roland Aers is a James B. Duke Professor of English, historical theology and religion at Duke University. He has published widely on literature, sacramental culture and ideology in medieval and Renaissance England.
Carolyn Dinshaw is an American academic and author, who has specialised in issues of gender and sexuality in the medieval context.
Wendy Scase is the Geoffrey Shepherd Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She is currently researching the material histories of English medieval literature, studying a range of material from one-sheet texts to the largest surviving Middle English manuscript.
Helen Barr is an academic specialising in English literature on the late medieval period. She has spent her entire career at the University of Oxford, and, in 2016, the university awarded her the title of Professor of English Literature.
Alastair J. Minnis is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature, and contributed substantially to the study of late-medieval theology and philosophy. Having gained a first-class B.A. degree at the Queen's University of Belfast, he matriculated at Keble College, Oxford as a visiting graduate student, where he completed work on his Belfast Ph.D., having been mentored by M.B. Parkes and Beryl Smalley. Following appointments at the Queen's University of Belfast and Bristol University, he was appointed Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York; also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies and later Head of English & Related Literature. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, Columbus, from where he moved to Yale University. In 2008, he was named Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale. He retired in 2018, and is now living in the Scottish Borders. Professor Minnis is a Fellow of the English Association, UK (2000), a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (2001), and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2016). From 2012 to 2014, he served as president of the New Chaucer Society. Currently, he is Vice-President of the John Gower Society. He was General Editor of the Cambridge University Press series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature from 1987 to 2018, and holds an honorary master's degree from Yale (2007) and an honorary doctorate from the University of York (2018). The University of York also bestowed on him the honorific title of Emeritus Professor of Medieval Literature (2018).
Norman Francis Blake was a British academic and scholar specialising in Middle English and Early Modern English language and literature on which he published abundantly during his career.
Thorlac Francis Samuel Turville-Petre is an English philologist who is Professor Emeritus and former head of the School of English at the University of Nottingham. He specializes in the study of Middle English literature.