Gossip: benchend, St Andrew's, Cheddar (Somerset)
Professor of English
Department of English
University of Pennsylvania
email: dwallace@english.upenn.edu
Regeneration: a Literary History of Europe, 1348-1418
David Wallace is Judith Rodin Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania. He was Chair of English 2001-4 and Interim Chair of Romance Languages, 2005-6; he served as President of the New Chaucer Society from 2004-6 and serves on the Program Committee for the 2010 (Siena) meeting. In Spring 2007 he was Visiting Professor, University of Melbourne, and in Spring 2008 Bain-Swiggett Professor of Poetry at Princeton. In April 2007 he was awarded the Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching at Penn: http://www.college.upenn.edu/honors/teaching/07.php David is a medievalist who looks forward to the early modern period; he works on English and Italian matters (and is a member of the Center for Italian Studies) with additional interests in French, German, eastern Europe, women's writing, romance, "discovery" of the Americas and the history of slavery. David is currently editing a literary history of Europe, 1348-1418, a work of 600,000 words in 81 chapters to be published by Oxford University Press and supported by the Guggenheim Foundation. This is organized not by 'national blocks' (English literature, Spanish literature, etc.) but rather by nine sequences of places, or itineraries. It assumes that the space of 'Europe' becomes intelligible only through dialogue with that which forms its 'outside,' or dialogues with it. A website is under construction: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~dwallace/regeneration/ David has made a series of radio documentaries for BBC Radio 3 with producer Paul Quinn: "God's First Englishman" (2003). A program on the local and international cultures of the Venerable Bede. Voice of Bede: Kevin Whately. "The Miraculous Journey of Margery Kempe" (2005). Retraces the voyage taken by Margery Kempe in 1433 as narrated by Book II of her Book. Voice of Margery Kempe: Prunella Scales. "Malory's Morte Darthur: A Tale of Two Texts" (2007). Considers the how the discovery of the unique manuscript of the Morte at Winchester in 1934 challenged assumptions founded in Caxton's edition of 1485. Voice of Malory: poet laureate Andrew Motion. These three documentaries, plus David's readings of Chaucer in Middle English, may be accessed via Pennsound: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Wallace.html David's most recent documentary, on the travels of antiquarian John Leland, was broadcast on Radio 3 in on 26 April 2009 as part of the 500th anniversary/ commiserations on the accession of Henry VIII in 1509. This features site interviews at Glastonbury and Wells, Bury St Edmund's Abbey, Titchfield, York Minster, the BL, St Paul's School and Guy of Warwick's cave with James Carley, James Simpson. Jennifer Summit, Bill Sheils, and Helen Cooper; the part of Leland is played by Jeremy Northam. In October 2007 David gave the Clarendon Lectures in English at Oxford; these are currently being written into book form for OUP as Strong Women: Life, Text, and Territory 1347-1645. The four women in question are Dorothea of Montau (1347-1394), Margery Kempe of Lynn (c. 1373-c. 1438), Mary Ward of Yorkshire (1585-1645), and Elizabeth Cary of Drury Lane (c. 1585-1639). For further information on Mary Ward, and celebrations of the 400th anniversary of her pioneering an apostolate of the streets for women, see http://www.bar-convent.org.uk/jubilee.htm With Jennifer Summit (Stanford) he has co-edited JMEMS 37.3 (Fall 2007), "Medieval/ Renaissance: After Periodization": http://medren.aas.duke.edu/jmems/articlesIndex.php?id=45 David's most recent book is Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn: http://books.google.com/books?id=KGcU4uSS0DcC Recent publications: "Periodizing Women: Mary Ward (1585-1645) and the Premodern Canon," JMEMS 36.2; The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's Writing (ed. with Carolyn Dinshaw, 2003), and The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (ed. 1999, 2002). David recently returned from a trip to Switzerland, for the first SAMEMES meeting, http://www.unil.ch/samemes, and Tokyo for a conference associated with the acquisition of four medieval MSS by Senshu University.
To find out more about his interests and his work, see the links below.