DEPT/SUBJECT AREA - Medieval English Literature
SUPERVISOR(S) - Professor Liz McAvoy, Dr Roberta Magnani
RESEARCH DEGREE (PhD)
THESIS TITLE - Floral Utopias and Otherworlds: Representations of the hortus conclusus in Chaucer and his contemporaries
My research focuses on a recurring setting for medieval texts: the enclosed garden or hortus conclusus. In Floral Utopias and Otherworlds, I examine gardenscapes as spaces which can shape the characters that inhabit them and reveal counter-narratives hidden by the linear plot.
Each of the first chapters examines a key garden from The Canterbury Tales (the Knight’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale and the Franklin’s Tale), while the final chapter focuses on three anonymous poems (The Isle of Ladies, The Assemblie of Ladies and The Flour and the Leaf), employing postmodern theories of sexuality, gender, and space.
