Welcome to another post in our ongoing series where we here at Ceræ invite you to ‘meet’ the authors of our latest published issue and learn a little bit more about their research interests (and their current reads!). Our next author is Grace Catherine Greiner, who studies medieval and early Renaissance literature, working at the intersection of poetics and codicology. She is also interested in: lyric, history of the book, law and literature, medieval music, Victorian medievalism, and contemporary experimental poetry.
Her article, ‘“Song withoute song”: Lyric Ritual and Commemorative Performance in the Book of the Duchess‘, ‘argues that, in Chaucer’s fourteenth-century dream vision, the Book of the Duchess, Chaucer’s narrative framing of the elegiac lyric, in which a mysterious ‘man in blak’ divulges the death of his beloved, suggests that the best — and possibly the only — way to reflect on and record another person’s experience of loss is, in fact, to meditate on another kind of loss: the ephemeral, original performance of lyric’.
Read Greiner’s Article Here
- Where can we find you on social media?
You can find me on Facebook (which I use largely to keep abreast of conferences and the like) and LinkedIn, as well as the usual academic suspects (ResearchGate, Academia.edu). - What projects are you currently working on (if you can divulge!)?
I’m currently seeking a publisher for my recently completed manuscript, Inscribing the Past: Chaucer, Lydgate, and the Late-Medieval Poetics of Materiality, and I’m also in the initial stages of my second and third book projects, the first of which explores premodern hybrid books disassembled by later owners, libraries, and archives, and the second of which is a centuries-long philological history of the word(s) par amours in medieval and early modern English literature. I’m also in the midst of writing an article on David Lowery’s The Green Knight, medievalist film adaptation, and nineteenth-century media technologies. - What are you currently reading for fun?
I’ve just finished up the delightful Emma Gray’s My Farming Life: Tales from a Shepherdess on a Remote Northumberland Farm. Ongoing reads include Marion Turner’s The Wife of Bath: An Autobiography, Seb Falk’s The Light Ages, and Diana Gabaldon’s (very long!) Outlander series. - What is a book that you would recommend to someone who reads your article in Ceræ and wants to learn more?
Andrew Hicks’ Composing the World: Harmony in the Medieval Platonic Cosmos is a fabulous read for anyone interested in the medieval theories of vox (voice) and its connection to materiality, which I explore late in my article. Michel Pastoureau’s color histories (a new one just came out, I believe) are also lively dips into the cultural significance of color across temporal and geographic boundaries. - Where would you like to see your field go in the next few years? Is there an area of research in your field that you feel needs more focus/attention?
In my research, I’ve long been interested in materiality and the relationship between pre-modern literature and material culture. As such, I’m excited to see how pre-modern scholars increasingly are thinking about the applicability of modern theories of materiality like the new materialisms (cf: Jane Bennett), material ecocriticism, and (adjacently) the environmental humanities within medieval literary studies, manuscript studies, and history of the book. I believe medieval authors and texts have much to say—and maybe even talk back—to modern theories and theorists in these areas.
Read Volume 9 (2022), Ritual: Practice, Performance, Reception
**Affiliate Disclaimer: As an affiliate of Booktopia, Ceræ will receive a small commission from any book that you purchase through one of our affiliate links. This comes at no extra cost to you, but helps us greatly. Any link that is an affiliate will be clearly labelled with an asterisk. For more information on this, please see our announcement blog post or our sponsorship page for more information. Thank you for your continued support!
Featured Image: The Trier Adventus Ivory, photo by Ann Münchow