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Mary Boyle, BA (KCL), M.St., D.Phil (Oxon)

Research

Mary Boyle is an Honorary Research Fellow, working on cross-cultural Anglo-German medievalism in the long nineteenth century. During this period, German- and English-language writers created distinct visions of the Middle Ages by translating, adapting, and rewriting one another’s medieval literature. These nations’ contemporary and historical constructions of the national and transnational past are interdependent, and research in this area is deeply relevant in today’s political climate, in which populist narratives depend on selective interpretations of medieval and modern history. 

Mary also works on medieval German and English comparative literature more broadly, and particularly on medieval religious writing. Her monograph, Writing the Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages was published in 2021 (DS Brewer). Her further research interests include the interaction of text, image, and material object in printed books and manuscripts. She is the co-founder of Teaching the Codex, an interdisciplinary project on the teaching of manuscript studies. In 2017, Mary was a Visiting Researcher at the Großbritannien-Zentrum/Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt University in Berlin, and from 2017-2020, she was an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University. From 2020-2024, she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and a Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford. 

Mary is currently the Outreach Coordinator for German at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow and Tutor at St Edmund's College, Cambridge. 

Publications

Books
Book Chapters
  • 'The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in English', in The Oxford Handbook of Middle English Prose, ed. Sebastian Sobecki and Emily Steiner (OUP, forthcoming).
  • 'Emma Letherbrow’s Gudrun: Kudrun for ‘modern’ Victorians' in International Medievalisms, ed. Mary Boyle (D.S. Brewer, 2023).
  • ‘Imaginatio, Anachronismus und Heilsgeschichte’ (with Annette Volfing) in Geschichte Erzählen, ed. Sarah Bowden, Manfred Eikelmann, Stephen Mossman, and Michael Stolz (Narr, 2020).
Journal Articles
  • 'Medievalist Forgery? Editions, Adaptations, and Translations of Kudrun in the Nineteenth Century' (postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2024) (free to access via link). 
  • ‘Hardly gear for woman to meddle with’: Kriemhild’s Violence in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Versions of the Nibelungenlied (Translation and Literature, 30.2 (2021), 170-197).
  • ‘To Gaze or Not to Gaze: The Nineteenth-century Der arme Heinrich from Volksbuch to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s “Miracle-Rhyme”’ (Modern Language Review, 114.2 (2019), 181-211).
  • ‘Merton College, MS. 315: An Introduction’ (Oxford German Studies, 46.2 (2017), 213–16).
  • ‘Converting Corpses: The Religious Other in the Munich Oswald and St Erkenwald’ (Oxford German Studies, 44.2 (2015), 113–35).
  • ‘William Wey’s Itinerary to the Holy Land: Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 565 (c. 1470)’ (Bodleian Library Record, 28.1 (2015), 22–36) (author accepted version free to access via link).
Popular Articles and Free-to-Access Publications
Book Review
  • Review of Rüsenberg (2016) (Modern Language Review, 113.1 (2018), 259–61).
Translations
  • Verse translations of thirteen poems (Der Wanderer: Schubert Lieder, Delphian, 2016).
  • Two chapter translations in The Impact of Idealism (vol. 3), ed. Jamme and Cooper (CUP, 2013).
Work in Progress
  • Holy Land Pilgrimage Texts, c. 300-1550 (co-editor, Brill).
  • The 'German Volk' and 'Us English Teutones' (author).