Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Dutton

Curriculum vitae

1992: Bousfield scholarship; 1994: Somerville College, University of Oxford: BA Honours in English Language and Literature (specialist Medieval English course); 1996: Brookes-Johnston Prize; MA in English Literary Studies at St John’s College, University of Durham, Thesis: ‘Images of Sainthood in Margery Kempe and Bridget of Sweden’; MA awarded July 1997; St Hilda’s College, Oxford: MSt in Research Methods in English (July 1997), British Academy studentship; 1998: Margaret Roper Research Prize; 2002: DPhil in Medieval English Literature at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, Thesis: ‘Compiling Julian: The Revelation of Love and the devotional compilation’; since 2011: Prof. of English Philology at University of Fribourg.

Main areas of research

My research interrogates the ways in which literature and drama make the abstract, concrete; the spiritual, material; the transcendent, immanent. So my examination of late-medieval women’s texts is codicologically based, considering the physical realities of the late-medieval book as offering means to turn visionary experience into textual material. Whereas a book can influence a reader through its material presentation of words, a play performed can enrich or problematise verbal meaning through its distinctive combination of words with actions: my research into drama is informed by my work as a theatre director. I currently head two research projects on early drama of different institutions: the Colleges of the University of Oxford, and convents for female religious.

Publications

• Medieval Theories of the Creative Act, ed. by Elisabeth Dutton and Martin Rohde, Wiesbaden 2017;
• Drama and Pedagogy in Medieval and Early Modern England, ed. by E. Dutton and J. McBain (Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 31), Tübingen 2015;
• A neglected witness to Chaucer’s Boece in a medieval devotional commentary on The Consolation of Philosophy, in: Carmina Philosophiae: Journal of the International Boethius Society (2015), pp. 1–34;
• John Heywood, Henry, and Hampton Court Palace, in: Performing Environments: Site Specificity in Medieval & Early Modern English Drama, ed. by S. Bennett and M. Polito, Basingstoke 2014, pp. 36–55;
• The Croxton Play of the Sacrament, in: The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, ed. by T. Betteridge and G. Walker, Oxford 2012, pp. 55–71;
• Secular Medieval Drama, in: The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English, ed. by E. Treharne and G. Walker, Oxford 2010, pp. 384–394;
• John Gower: Trilingual Poet, ed. by E. Dutton, with J. Hines and R. F. Yeager, Cambridge 2010;
• Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love, ed., modernized and introduced by E. Dutton, Yale 2008;
• Julian of Norwich: the Influence of Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations, Cambridge 2008;
• Christ as Codex: Compilation as Literary Device in ‘Book to a Mother’, in: Leeds Studies in English, New Series 35 (2004), pp. 81–100;
• with P. Mommaers, Hadewijch: Writer, Beguine and Love-Mystic, Leuven 2004;