Biography
- BA Warwick (1982); PhD Warwick (1986)
- Research Fellow, Downing College, Cambridge (1986-88)
- Lecturer at University of Cambridge and Fellow of St Catharine’s College (1988-98)
- Professor of French Language and Literature, King's College London, from 1998, Head of Department 1998-2004
- Fellow of King's College London, from 2015
- Honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, from 2016
- Fellow of the British Academy, from 2018
Research Interests and PhD Supervision
- Old French literature
- Medieval Occitan literature
- Textual criticism (editing medieval texts)
- Modern critical theory
Simon Gaunt's main research interests are: Old French literature; medieval Occitan literature; textual criticism (editing medieval texts); modern critical theory. He has worked on a wide range of twelfth- and thirteenth-century texts, including troubadour lyric, chansons de geste, verse and prose courtly romance, fabliaux, beast epic, hagiography, the Roman de la Rose and medieval travel literature. He is particularly interested in theoretically oriented approaches to medieval literature and textual criticism, notably in relation to feminism and queer theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, anthropology and postcolonial theory. His most recent books are Marco Polo's Le Devisement du Monde: Narrative Voice, Language and Diversity (Boydell and Brewer, 2013) and (with Karen Pratt) The Song of Roland and other Poems of Charlemagne (OUP, 2016). He was PI on the AHRC-funded project Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France, see http://www.medievalfrancophone.ac.uk/, and is currently PI on the ERC-funded project The Values of French, see http://www.tvof.ac.uk/.
Topics on which Simon Gaunt has supervised PhD theses include: Occitan satire, verse romance compilations, community in saints’ lives, cyclical narratives, the continuations to Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte du graal, medieval debate poetry, medieval translation, and the mobility of medieval lyric.
For more details please see his full research profile.
Teaching
Simon Gaunt teaches classes on medieval French and Occitan literature; critical theory, particularly feminism, queer theory, poststructuralism, and psychoanalysis; 19th- and 20th-c. French literature.
Expertise and Public Engagement
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Gaunt, S. B., Burgwinkle, W. & Gilbert, J., 1 Mar 2020, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 290 p. (Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture) Research output: Book/Report - Book
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Gaunt, S. B., 2020, (Unpublished) En français hors de France. Textes, livres, collections du Moyen Âge. Zinelli, F. & Lefèvre, S. (eds.). Paris: Éditions de Linguistique et de Philologie, p. 1-23 23 p. Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding - Chapter
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Gaunt, S. B., Morcos, H. J., Ventura, S., Rachetta, M. T., Ravenhall, H. A., Noel, G., Ferraro, G. & Caton, P. N., 2017 Research output: Other contribution
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Gaunt, S. & Pratt, K., Nov 2016, Oxford University Press. 288 p. (Oxford World Classics) Research output: Book/Report - Book
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Gaunt, S. B., 2016, In : Medioevo Romanzo. 40, 2016, p. 27-47 Research output: Contribution to journal - Article
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Gaunt, S., 5 Jul 2015, In : INTERFACES. 1, p. 25-61 37 p. Research output: Contribution to journal - Article. DOIs: https://doi.org/10.13130/interfaces-4938
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Gaunt, S. B., 2014, In : Critica del testo. 17, 3, p. 9-23 14 p. Research output: Contribution to journal - Article
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Gaunt, S. B., 2014 Research output: Other contribution
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Gaunt, S., Jun 2013, Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 199 p. Research output: Book/Report - Book
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Gaunt, S., 2013, (Accepted/In press) Commemorating Violence: the Writing of History in the Francophone Middle Ages. Guynn, N. & Stahuljak, Z. (eds.). Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, p. 187-201 Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding - Chapter