Biography
Karen Pratt has an MA in French and German from the University of Oxford (St Hilda’s College) and a PhD in Medieval French and German from Reading University.
Having taught for 10 years at Goldsmiths’ College, she came to King’s in 1993 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2000 and to Professor of Medieval French Literature in 2009.
Research Interests and PhD Supervision
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Medieval French literature
Her research focuses on comparative medieval literature (French and German), medieval rhetoric and translation theory, feminist approaches to Old and Middle French literature (antifeminist texts and defences of women, especially Christine de Pizan and Jean LeFèvre), Arthurian literature (books on La Mort le roi Artu and The Arthur of the French), Old French epic, and the romances of Gautier d’Arras. She published an edition/translation of the latter’s Eracle in 2007 and is at present preparing an edition/translation of Jean LeFèvre’s Livre de Leesce for the Pontifical Institute in Toronto.
Having written two articles on a medieval miscellaneous manuscript, she was awarded in 2010 a major European grant from HERA for research into the dynamics of the French medieval miscellany, tracing the contextualisation of short narratives from one text collection to another. This research was conducted with colleagues from the Universities of Bristol, Utrecht and Vienna, who studied this phenomenon in the context of English, Dutch and German multi-text codices. See http://www2.hum.uu.nl/project/medievalmanuscript/index.html for her latest publications, including the Proceedings from a major international conference held in Utrecht in 2013.
For more details, please see Karen's full research profile.
Expertise and Public Engagement
Karen Pratt is a member of the Société Rencesvals and the Gender and Medieval Studies Group. She is a former President of the British Branch of the International Courtly Literature Society, and honorary President of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society and of the London Medieval Society. She also served as a member of the Vinaver Trust and is a Lady Freeman of the City of Leicester.