Medieval and Renaissance

The Medieval and Renaissance (MedRen) research group supports scholars and postgraduate researchers in the School of English working on literature from the Anglo-Saxon period through to the 18th century. The group hosts a number of staff and postgraduate seminars and reading groups. It also provides research infrastructure and culture for two period-based MLitt programmes, the MLitt in Medieval English and the MLitt in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literary Culture.

MedRen opportunities

Postgraduate students working in the fields of Medieval or Renaissance literature automatically become associate members of the MedRen group, taking advantage of its many research resources and opportunities. These include:

• the Folger Institute Consortium,
• a supported programme of visiting speakers, colloquia and conferences listed on the School's Events page,
• the St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

Both the speakers' programme and RemNet offers opportunities for staff and postgraduates to share work-in-progress. Staff and students in the MedRen group are strong supporters of the development of the University of St Andrews Special Collections of early printed books and manuscripts.

Research projects

Staff research primarily takes the form of writing high-quality monographs and articles, scholarly editing, digital outputs, and of the editing of critical collections on literature from the Anglo-Saxon period to the 18th century.

Dr Rhiannon Purdie is a commissioning editor for Boydell and Brewer's Studies in Medieval Romance series and the Editorial Secretary for the Scottish Text Society. Dr Margaret Connolly is General Editor of Middle English Texts (published by Winter, Heidelberg) and Chair of the Advisory Board of the Index of Middle English Prose.  

Recent and current staff research projects include:

• Fontes Anglo-Saxonici - the collaborative database of early medieval literary borrowings (Old English and Latin texts), a project run by Dr Christine Rauer
• A Literary History of Mercia - Dr Christine Rauer's ongoing survey of the textual output of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia
• the mapping of English vernacular lives of Christ in the Geographies of Orthodoxy project, conducted in collaboration with Queen's University, Belfast
• Professor Neil Rhodes' and Professor Andrew Hadfield's MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations series
• Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture - Professor Lorna Hutson's series of critical monographs. 

Recent and current PhD topics include:

• wolves in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture
• textual criticism and exegesis of the Anglo-Saxon Bible
• textual history of Anglo-Saxon genealogy, its religious influences and uses
• the reception of King Arthur in late-medieval Scotland
• the grotesque in late-medieval English and Scottish literature
• the translation of Villon into English literary culture
• penance and confession in psalmic poetry and prose of the 16th century
• legal bonds in English and Spanish Renaissance drama
• the reception of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 1609-1790
• 17th century English devotional poetry
• Ben Jonson and 'character'
• sovereignty and lawmaking violence on the Renaissance stage.