Saul Bailey

I am a DPhil candidate working on medieval literature with the Faculty of English Language & Literature, Jesus College, University of Oxford, and the National Archives. Prior to doctoral studies, I completed by BA in English at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an MSt in English (650-1550) at Jesus College, Oxford, for which I held the Violet Vaughan Morgan Studentship.

My doctoral research, supervised by Dr Marion Turner and Dr Euan Roger, takes a materialist approach to the Thameside life and poetry of Geoffrey Chaucer. I focus on the spaces where country and city meet in Chaucer’s professional life as a civil servant responsible for building works and port customs, questioning how this might have impacted his poetry from an environmental, social and material perspective. Chaucer’s environments exist in the complex matrix of real life and become fertile grounds for studying the medieval Anthropocene, class divides, sexual struggles and national identity.

My broader research interests include: Chaucer; Laȝamon; Margery Kempe; material culture; ecocriticism; the queer Middle Ages; monstrosity; animal studies; the body; national epic; postcolonialism; conquest literature; affective piety.