I work across a number of fields and periods, including: medieval literature (English, Latin, French); literary theory from ancient to modern; the history of rhetoric; the reception of classical traditions in medieval and early modern Europe; intellectuals, learning, and literacy in medieval Europe; history of the emotions. Usually my teaching combines my interests in antiquity and the Middle Ages--or how the Middle Ages understood antiquity.  Among my current projects are the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature vol. 1, The Middle Ages, and essays on medieval Latin annotation and glossing and on Aristotle's Rhetoric in medieval England.  I am also interested in representations of the intellectual in pre-modern Europe, from late antique rhetorical culture to late medieval university cultures and heretical communities.  My recent books are: Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric:  Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300-1475, co-authored with Ineke Sluiter; and The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, co-edited with Peter Struck.  I am a co-founder of the annual New Medieval Literatures (see information at Brepols), and co-editor, with Jill Ross, of Toronto Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Rhetoric, a new book series from Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.  In fall, 2010, I was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, working in the research group Encountering Scripture. on medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic approaches to scriptural exegesis. 

Recent graduate courses that I have taught include: The Classics and Middle English Literature; Medieval Education; The Sophists:  Ancient Traditions and Post-Classical Receptions (co-taught with Ralph Rosen); Introduction to Literary Theory (Comparative Literature); Medieval Allegory; Premodern Rhetorics; Piers Plowman; Chaucer's Classicism.  Undergraduate courses that I teach include: History of Literary Theory (Ancient to Modern); Ancient and Medieval Epic; The Romance of Pagan Antiquity.

Books:

Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge, 1991/1995.

Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1996.

 Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning. Cambridge, 2001.

 Co-authored with Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric:  Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300-1475.  Oxford, 2009

 Co-edited with Peter Struck, The Cambridge Companion to Allegory.  Cambridge, 2010

 Co-edited with Christopher Cannon and Nicolette Zeeman, Medieval Grammar and the Literary Arts, special issue of New Medieval Literatures (2009)