Peter Brown

Biography

I have previously taught at the University of Exeter, the University of California (Los Angeles), the University of Connecticut at Storrs and at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where I was a Fulbright Scholar. I have lectured extensively in north America, New Zealand and Europe. At present I am Academic Director at the University of Kent’s Paris School of Arts and Culture in Montparnasse. Among current projects are a study of the will of a mid fifteenth-century book owner, a reader’s history of English literature, and a revision of my Companion to Chaucer. Essays just completed and published or forthcoming include a study of the text and context of the imperfect version of Thomas Hoccleve’s Male Regle in Canterbury Cathedral Archives, a survey of literary practice in and around Canterbury during the years 1348 to 1420, and an account of Chaucer’s travels for the courts of Edward III and Richard II. Two books of mine have recently appeared. The first, Reading Chaucer (Oxford and Bern: Peter Lang) is a selection of essays previously published with the addition of one new piece, ‘Towards a Bohemian Reading of Troilus and Criseyde’. It puts Chaucer’s great poem within the context of the central European culture that he encountered at the court of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia. Other essays cover authors such as John Gower, Ranulph Higden and Thomas Hoccleve. Inspect the book here. The second book, Tango (Canterbury: Yorick Books) is a meditation on the way in which tango mediates touch through technique and decorum. It looks at the theme of touch in representations of the dance in the internet film Perdizione, the iconic song ‘Volver’ sung by Carlos Gardel and a ‘metaphysical’ poem on the bandoneón by Mario Benedetti. Some of the wider implications of touch and tango are caught in a series of short poems. Inspect the book here.

Research Interest

English