Professor Catherine Leglu

Biography

I am a medievalist specialising in Occitan and French literature, and former Director of the University of Reading's Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies. I am a former member of the international committee of the 'Association internationale d'études occitanes' (AIEO) www.aieo.org My PhD was in the satirical tradition of troubadour poetry. My current research focuses on translation and adaptation of Latin didactic texts into the vernacular, as well as on word-and-image relations. I have published on Old Occitan satirical and moralising verse, Old French lyric poetry (pastourelle and chansons de toile), and Middle French romance and didactic texts. My recent research has been on issues of multilingualism in French, Occitan and Catalan literature, as well as on the vernacular translation and adaptation of Latin didactic texts (e.g. Middle French versions of Valerius Maximus' Facta et dicta memorabilia). My current project, initially funded by the Leverhulme Trust (2011-13) is an edition of the Occitan version of a fourteenth-century universal history told largely through the medium of genealogies and images (British Library Egerton 1500), I have advised postgraduate research on medieval heresy in the Languedoc, tax records in Occitan-speaking regions, as well as on nineteenth-century Occitan writers. Enquiries are welcome concerning postgraduate research in any of the following areas: word and image relations in poetry and didactic literature, multilingualism, hybridity, vernacular book cultures, translation, book culture, education, performance, vernacular readers, heresy and authority, adaptation (medieval and modern).

Research Interest

My current research focuses on translation and adaptation of Latin didactic texts into the vernacular, as well as on word-and-image relations. I have published on Old Occitan satirical and moralising verse, Old French lyric poetry (pastourelle and chansons de toile), and Middle French romance and didactic texts.