New book by Professor Clare Lees on the history of early medieval English literature

Professor Clare Lees publishes the first full-scale history of early medieval English literature in nearly a century

Clare Lees, Professor of Medieval Literature and History of the Language, has edited The Cambridge History of Early Medieval English Literature, published by Cambridge University Press. The work is part of The New Cambridge History of English Literature series, a set of seven books which chart the history of English literature throughout the major periods of its development and encompasses fifteen centuries.

Professor Lees’ work explores early writing from the end of the Roman Empire to the mid-twelfth century in Britain and Ireland and includes a discussion of key texts such as Beowulf and the writings of the English monk and author Bede. Professor Lees explains that another volume in the series, the New Cambridge History of Medieval English, edited by David Wallace leaves the period between the sixth and eleventh centuries untouched. “The invitation to edit a book on precisely this period in the same series also offered an opportunity to formulate ways of thinking about its literary culture for the twenty-first century.  This is a place where the pre-national literary traditions of the earlier Middle Ages meet those post-national, transnational literary cultures of the contemporary world.”

Lees admits feeling both daunted and elated at being asked to edit the work and describes it as “an interesting challenge to define a new approach to our understanding of the literary history of the earliest writing in Britain and Ireland.” Editorial of the book involved working with 28 contributors whose research expertise ranged from medieval Welsh to Gaelic, Latin, Scandinavian as well as Old English (Anglo-Saxon) literature and subjects which ranged from poetry to historical writing, medicine and science.  

Contributors to the work include Professor Julia Crick who joined King’s as Professor of Palaeography and Manuscript Studies in 2012, who was asked to contribute while in her previous post at the University of Exeter. Early career scholars also contributed including Dr Joshua Davies, currently teaching in the English Department at King’s who contributed a chapter on ‘The literary languages of Old English: words, styles, voices’.

Professor Lees’ current research explores how Old English literature may be explored using modern writers’ perspectives. “This, for me, includes Chaucer and as well as those more modern contemporary English-language writers who are so interested in the earliest English literature (such as Denise Levertov and Maureen Duffy as well as the more obvious Seamus Heaney and Paul Muldoon)!”. As well as researching and teaching in the English Department, Professor Lees is also Director of the Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies (CLAMS) at King’s, which fosters research in medieval  visual culture, palaeography, manuscript studies, history, music, philosophy, theology and all the major medieval languages and literatures.  

View Clare Lees’ profile