Meet our new team member
We are delighted to announce that we have appointed Henry Ravenhall as the project’s PhD student. Henry was selected from a strong field of applicants, and we thank all those who took the time to apply.
Henry discusses his research interests and PhD proposal below.
‘I completed a BA in French and History at KCL in 2015, focussing on late antique and medieval history. My undergraduate dissertation concerned a piece of medieval Latin historiography entitled Historia Comitum Ghisnensium (‘History of the Counts of Guines’) in which by applying a quantitative approach I sought to ascertain how descriptions of character (‘being’) and conduct (‘doing’) changed according to the historical chronology presented within the text. I have therefore been very much interested in applying linguistic methods to answer historical questions. I am currently studying for an MA in French Literature and Culture also at KCL, which I will complete in September 2016. I am also taking bi-weekly classes in Latin and have been attending palaeography sessions. I have become increasingly interested in how medieval languages interact and develop over time, particularly in relation to processes of vernacularisation.
My research proposal essentially seeks to question the divide between ‘Fiction’ and ‘History’ that as modern readers we impose upon medieval texts. Our simplistic attribution of these categories appears to belie contemporary consideration of the texts. It is my belief that we should attempt to identify firstly whether these categories can be kept at all, and secondly, if they are indeed problematic, what we may use to take their place. I’d like to ask: What can manuscript dissemination and compilation tell us about how medieval authors and audiences conceived of their texts? How does the choice of language (in regard to the local context) affect the textual discourse? What can notions of orality and spoken-ness communicate about how texts were initially formed and then received? And then, perhaps most crucially: how static or fluid are any such generic distinctions and how may they have changed over time and space in Europe between 1100–1450?’
Henry Ravenhall