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Dr Daniel Thomas - Lecturer in English

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Dr Daniel Thomas

Lecturer in English

Introduction

I grew up in London before coming up to Oxford to read English at Lady Margaret Hall. After graduating, I moved to Jesus College, Oxford for my Masters in medieval literature and subsequently for my DPhil. I have taught medieval English language and literature, and the English language, at a variety of Oxford colleges since 2008. Most recently, I have been working as a researcher on the EU-funded project CLASP: A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry located at the English Faculty here in Oxford. 

Teaching

I teach medieval language and literature, covering the period from the earliest written records of English in the seventh century until the reign of Henry VIII in the mid-sixteenth century. My teaching focuses, however, particularly upon the early medieval period. I also teach the history and development of the English language.

Research

My research focuses on Old English literature (roughly anything written in English before the twelfth century). I have particular interests in vernacular poetics, cultural constructions of space and place, and architectural metaphor. I am also peculiarly interested in the conceptualization of prisons in early medieval prose and verse, which is the focus of the book on which I’m currently working.

 

Publications

‘The Gates of Hell: Invasion and Damnation in an Anonymous Old English Easter Vigil Homily’, in Leeds Studies in English: Special Issue - Architectural Representation in Early Medieval England (forthcoming).

‘Landes to fela: Geography, Topography and Place in The Battle of Maldon’, in English Studies 98:8 (2017), 781–801.

‘Associative Memory and the Composition of Ælfric’s Dominica in Quinquagessima (Catholic Homilies I 10)’, Notes & Queries 64:1 (2017), 5–10.

‘Rewriting Gregory the Great: the Prison Analogy in Napier Homily I’, Review of English Studies 68 (2017), 203–23.

‘Incarceration as Judicial Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England’, in eds. Jay Paul Gates and Nicole Marafioti, Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), 92–112.

‘Literal and Spiritual Depths: re-thinking the ‘drygne seað’ of Elene’, Quaestio Insularis 10 (2009), 27–44.