Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College

Address:  Jesus College, Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DW

Email:   thomas.hinton@jesus.ox.ac.uk

Research

Medieval French and Occitan literature, especially of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; Arthurian romance; manuscripts and the material context of medieval texts; more broadly: the uses of the past; the aesthetics of narrative; histories of reading and the reception of literature.

My current research project explores how the developement of lay literacy in the thirteenth century affected the status of vernacular languages and their literary traditions, focusing on the case of French and Occitan. In connection with this, I recently organised a colloquium at Jesus College entitled 'Lingua Francas in the Middle Ages. Non-Native Vernacular Use in Medieval European Culture'. I am also involved, along with four other early career scholars, in a project on conceptualising the medieval library, focussing on collections including French texts; we ask why certain works were kept together, and what such collections can tell us about how texts were read and contributed to the production of vernacular knowledge.

From October 2012, I will be taking up an Addison Wheeler Research Fellowship at the University of Durham.

Publications

Books

The Conte du Graal Cycle. Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, the Continuations, and French Arthurian Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012. 290pp. ISBN13: 9781843842859.

Articles

 'Paroles gelées: Voices of Vernacular Authority in the Troubadour Vida Corpus', Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes 22 (2011): 75-86

‘New Beginnings or False Dawns? A Re-Appraisal of the Elucidation Prologue to the Conte du Graal Cycle’, Medium Aevum 80 (2011): 41-55

‘The Aesthetics of Communication: Sterility and Fertility in the Conte del Graal Cycle’, Arthurian Literature 26 (2009): 97-108

‘Littérature narrative et identité culturelle en Occitanie au moyen âge’, Revue des langues romanes 113 (2009): 177-93