Stephanie Hollis | |
---|---|
Born | 1946 (age 77–78) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Australian National University , University of Adelaide |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Auckland |
Stephanie Joan Hollis (born 1946) [1] is a New Zealand scholar of English,and is emeritus professor at the University of Auckland,specialising in medieval literature.
Hollis earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Adelaide,and then completed a PhD in English in 1977 at the Australian National University. [2] Hollis then joined the faculty of the University of Auckland,rising to associate professor in 1995 and then full professor. [3] Hollis was the Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern European Studies at the university,which was created in 2003 in response to an increase in interest partly attributed to The Lord of the Rings. [4] [5]
Hollis retired and was appointed emeritus professor in 2009. [2] She was a trustee of Auckland Library Heritage Trust from 2011 to 2016. [6] Hollis served on the International Editorial Board of the journal Parergon. [4]
Hollis has written and edited a number of books on medieval literature,including the 2007 volume Migrations:Medieval Manuscripts in New Zealand,co-edited with Alexandra Barratt,and published by Cambridge Scholars. [7] [8] This was the "only significant book-length work" to be published on New Zealand manuscripts since a catalogue of holdings by Margaret Manion,Vera Vines,and Christopher de Hamel published in 1989. [9] Hollis has also written on Sir George Grey's collections in New Zealand and South Africa,and the founding of the priory at Minster-in-Thanet,and the poems Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Beowulf .
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English alliterative verse. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs: the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess. It remains popular in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage, and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations.
In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Layamon's Brut and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.
The Green Knight is a heroic character of the Matter of Britain, originating in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the related medieval work The Greene Knight. His true name is revealed to be Bertilak de Hautdesert in Sir Gawain, while The Greene Knight names him "Bredbeddle". The Green Knight later features as one of Arthur's greatest champions in the fragmentary ballad King Arthur and King Cornwall, again with the name "Bredbeddle".
Ottonian architecture is an architectural style which evolved during the reign of Emperor Otto the Great. The style was found in Germany and lasted from the mid 10th century until the mid 11th century.
Walter Andre Goffart is a German-born American historian who specializes in Late Antiquity and the European Middle Ages. He taught for many years in the history department and Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto (1960–1999), and is currently a senior research scholar at Yale University. He is the author of monographs on a ninth-century forgery, late Roman taxation, four "barbarian" historians, and historical atlases.
Audrey Lilian Meaney was an archaeologist and historian specialising in the study of Anglo-Saxon England. She published several books on the subject, including Gazetteer of Early Anglo-Saxon Burial Sites (1964) and Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing Stones (1981).
The Kentish Royal Legend is a diverse group of Medieval texts which describe a wide circle of members of the royal family of Kent from the 7th to 8th centuries AD. Key elements include the descendants of Æthelberht of Kent over the next four generations; the establishment of various monasteries, most notably Minster-in-Thanet; and the lives of a number of Anglo-Saxon saints and the subsequent travels of their relics. Although it is described as a legend, and contains a number of implausible episodes, it is placed in a well attested historical context.
Andrew Philip McDowell Orchard, is a British academic of Old English, Norse and Celtic literature. He is Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He was previously Provost of Trinity College, Toronto, from 2007 to 2013. In 2021, claims of sexual harassment and assault by Orchard were publicized, which were alleged at universities where he has worked, including the University of Cambridge and the University of Toronto.
Helen Damico was a Greek-born American scholar of Old English and Old English literature.
Jonathan James Graham Alexander, FBA, known in print as J. J. G. Alexander, is a medievalist and expert on manuscripts, "one of the most profound and wide-ranging of all historians of illuminated manuscripts".
England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876–1947) is a 2010 book edited by David Rollason, Conrad Leyser and Hannah Williams.
Philippa Catherine "Pip" Maddern was an Australian historian and academic, who was Director of the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.
The beheading game is a literary trope found in Irish mythology and medieval chivalric romance. The trope consists of a stranger who arrives at a royal court and challenges a hero to an exchange of blows: the hero may decapitate the stranger, but the stranger may then inflict the same wound upon the hero. The supernatural nature of the stranger, which makes this possible, is only revealed when he retrieves his severed head. When the hero submits himself to the return blow, he is rewarded for his valour and is left with only a minor wound. The hero is seen as coming of age by undergoing the exchange of blows, and his symbolic death and rebirth is represented by the feigned return blow.
Constance Bartlett Hieatt was an American scholar with a broad interest in medieval languages and literatures, including Old Norse literature, Anglo-Saxon prosody and literature, and Middle English language, literature, and culture. She was an editor and translator of Karlamagnús saga, of Beowulf, and a scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer. She was particularly known as one of the world's foremost experts in English medieval cooking and cookbooks, and authored and co-authored a number of important books considered essential publications in the field.
Carol Braun Pasternack was a professor of medieval English literature and language at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) from 1988 to 2013. She chaired the Medieval Studies department, and was also Dean of Summer Sessions at UCSB in 2011–2013.
Angela Care Evans,, is an archaeologist and former Curator in the department of Britain, Europe, and Prehistory at the British Museum. She has published extensively on the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 artefacts and early medieval metalwork.
The Keys of Middle-earth: Discovering Medieval Literature Through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien is a 2005 book by Stuart Lee and Elizabeth Solopova. It is meant to provide an understanding of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings in the context of medieval literature, including Old and Middle English and Old Norse, but excluding other relevant languages such as Finnish.
Katherine L. Jansen is an American historian and professor of medieval history at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She also has served as visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins University and Princeton University.
Alexandra Anne Talbot Barratt (née Carr) is a New Zealand academic, and is professor emerita at the University of Waikato. Barratt is a specialist in medieval manuscripts.
Kathryn Margaret Wallsnée Meek is a New Zealand scholar of English literature, and is an emeritus professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in English literature from the Middle Ages to present day.