Stephanie Downes | University of Melbourne (original) (raw)
I specialise in late medieval French and English manuscripts, texts, and their readers. A postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, my current research on 'Reading the Face' in 15th- and 16th-century textual culture explores literary and visual depictions of expressive faces in both manuscript and print.
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Papers by Stephanie Downes
Critics have long addressed questions of affect, feeling and emotional expression in Middle Engli... more Critics have long addressed questions of affect, feeling and emotional expression in Middle English literature , but only in recent years has their interest begun to take theoretical form under the rubric of the 'history of emotions'. Current critical attitudes to the study of emotions in the past have been shaped substantially by the work of historians, whose focus on emotion in documentary sources has been inf luenced in turn by research in the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, linguistics and, increasingly, the cognitive sciences. How might existing methodologies situating emotions historically drive new approaches in Middle English literary studies? This article contends that existing analyses of Middle English literature relating to affective discourses might fruitfully be brought into conversation with new multidisciplinary forms of research into past emotions. We survey current critical trends in both the history of emotions and in Middle English literature. Case studies of two late Middle English literary texts, the anonymous Sir Orfeo and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, show how the last fifty years of scholarship has addressed emotions in Middle English literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions that might be taken up by critics of medieval English literary texts and genres to develop further the relationship between literary studies and the history of emotions.
Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England, 2016
Shakespeare and Emotions, 2015
This article surveys the critical reception of Chaucer’s works in nineteenth-century France and s... more This article surveys the critical reception of Chaucer’s works in nineteenth-century France and suggests what modern analyses of Chaucer’s relation to France and literature in French might stand to gain from taking the perspective of French readers and critics into account. An intellectual reorientation of the “French tradition” would allow us to interrogate the inherited critical vocabulary in which we think and write about Anglo-French exchange and to reconsider the very categories of “English” and “French” themselves, whether literary, linguistic, political, or disciplinary.
The Mediaeval Journal, 2014
In the twenty-first century scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the multilingualism of ... more In the twenty-first century scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the multilingualism of Britain in the last centuries of the Middle Ages. This article further challenges long-held narratives of the ‘triumph’ of English by exploring the ‘making’ of Anglo-Norman and its subsequent marginalization within the academy. It focuses on the reception of the chronicle of Piers Langtoft (c. 1307), largely during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and analyses the processes by which the language in which it was written became culturally, historically, and geographically established - in order that it might be expelled.
Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2011
Early Modern Women: An …, Jan 1, 2011
... Debate of the Romance of the Rose. Christine de Pizan (book author), David F. Hult (book ed... more ... Debate of the Romance of the Rose. Christine de Pizan (book author), David F. Hult (book editor and translator), Stephanie Downes (review author). Full Text: Subscribers Only © 2011 Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. © 2006-2011 University of Maryland. ...
Talks by Stephanie Downes
Critics have long addressed questions of affect, feeling and emotional expression in Middle Engli... more Critics have long addressed questions of affect, feeling and emotional expression in Middle English literature , but only in recent years has their interest begun to take theoretical form under the rubric of the 'history of emotions'. Current critical attitudes to the study of emotions in the past have been shaped substantially by the work of historians, whose focus on emotion in documentary sources has been inf luenced in turn by research in the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, linguistics and, increasingly, the cognitive sciences. How might existing methodologies situating emotions historically drive new approaches in Middle English literary studies? This article contends that existing analyses of Middle English literature relating to affective discourses might fruitfully be brought into conversation with new multidisciplinary forms of research into past emotions. We survey current critical trends in both the history of emotions and in Middle English literature. Case studies of two late Middle English literary texts, the anonymous Sir Orfeo and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, show how the last fifty years of scholarship has addressed emotions in Middle English literature. We conclude by suggesting future directions that might be taken up by critics of medieval English literary texts and genres to develop further the relationship between literary studies and the history of emotions.
Spaces for Reading in Later Medieval England, 2016
Shakespeare and Emotions, 2015
This article surveys the critical reception of Chaucer’s works in nineteenth-century France and s... more This article surveys the critical reception of Chaucer’s works in nineteenth-century France and suggests what modern analyses of Chaucer’s relation to France and literature in French might stand to gain from taking the perspective of French readers and critics into account. An intellectual reorientation of the “French tradition” would allow us to interrogate the inherited critical vocabulary in which we think and write about Anglo-French exchange and to reconsider the very categories of “English” and “French” themselves, whether literary, linguistic, political, or disciplinary.
The Mediaeval Journal, 2014
In the twenty-first century scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the multilingualism of ... more In the twenty-first century scholars have increasingly drawn attention to the multilingualism of Britain in the last centuries of the Middle Ages. This article further challenges long-held narratives of the ‘triumph’ of English by exploring the ‘making’ of Anglo-Norman and its subsequent marginalization within the academy. It focuses on the reception of the chronicle of Piers Langtoft (c. 1307), largely during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and analyses the processes by which the language in which it was written became culturally, historically, and geographically established - in order that it might be expelled.
Notes and Queries, Jan 1, 2011
Early Modern Women: An …, Jan 1, 2011
... Debate of the Romance of the Rose. Christine de Pizan (book author), David F. Hult (book ed... more ... Debate of the Romance of the Rose. Christine de Pizan (book author), David F. Hult (book editor and translator), Stephanie Downes (review author). Full Text: Subscribers Only © 2011 Arizona Board of Regents for Arizona State University. © 2006-2011 University of Maryland. ...
