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Horobin, Professor Simon
Job Title: Professor of English Language and Literature and Tutorial Fellow
College: Magdalen
Period/ Subject: Medieval, Language
Email address: simon.horobin@magd.ox.ac.uk
Research Interests:
My research focuses on the manuscripts of Middle English literary works, particularly on the circumstances of their production, circulation and reception. I am currently completing a collaborative 4-year project (with Linne Mooney, University of York), funded by the AHRC, which aims to identify the scribes responsible for copying the manuscripts of the works of Gower, Chaucer, Langland, Trevisa and Hoccleve. I am currently drawing on the material gathered for this project to write a book on the manuscripts, scribes and readers of Piers Plowman.
I have just begun a collaborative project (with Alex Gillespie, University of Toronto), funded by the Mellon Foundation, which aims to index all the notes made by sixteenth-century scribes in the collection of books owned by Matthew Parker and now in the Parker Library in Cambridge. This will lead to a reassessment of the contributions of the various individuals involved in the establishment and use of the Parker Library, people such as John Stow, John Bale and Stephan Batman, and a reconsideration of the importance of Parker’s books to the making of the Middle Ages in Elizabethan England.
Teaching Areas:
Old and Middle English. History of the English Language. Palaeography and the History of the Book.
Recent Publications:
Books:
Studying the History of Early English. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Chaucer’s Language. Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
[‘Highly recommended’ Times Higher Education Supplement]
The Language of the Chaucer Tradition. Chaucer Studies 32. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003
[Awarded the English Association’s Beatrice White Prize for outstanding scholarly work in the field of Medieval and Renaissance studies.]
An Introduction to Middle English. (with J.J. Smith) Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002; Oxford University Press USA/Canada.
New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Volume 1: Syntax and Morphology, eds. C. Kay, S. Horobin and J. Smith. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 251. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2004.
Articles and chapters in books:
1. ‘Forms of Circulation’, forthcoming in Julia Boffey and A.S.G. Edwards eds., A Companion to Fifteenth-Century Poetry (Boydell and Brewer).
2. ‘Manuscripts and Readers of Piers Plowman’, forthcoming in Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman (Cambridge University Press).
3. ‘Compiling the Canterbury Tales in Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts’, forthcoming in a special issue of The Chaucer Review.
4. ‘Chaucer Manuscripts and the Middle English Dictionary’, in Eugenio Contreras and Ana Laura Rodriguez Redondo eds., Focus on Old and Middle English Studies (Madrid, 2011), pp. 11-23.
5. ‘Editing’, forthcoming in Terttu Nevalainen and Elizabeth Traugott eds., A Handbook to the History of English (Oxford University Press).
6. ‘Text of The Canterbury Tales’, forthcoming in Gerald Morgan (ed.), Chaucer in Context (Peter Lang, 2011).
7. ‘Chaucer and Late Medieval Language’, Literature Compass 8:5 (2011), 258–265.
8. ‘Stephan Batman’s Manuscripts of Piers Plowman’, Review of English Studies 62 (2010), 358-372.
9. ‘The scribe of Bodleian Library MS Digby 102 and the circulation of the C text of Piers Plowman’, forthcoming in Yearbook of Langland Studies 24 (2010), 89-112.
10. ‘Further Books annotated by Stephan Batman’ (with A.S.G. Edwards), The Library 7th series, vol. 11 (2010), 223-7.
11. ‘Adam Pinkhurst, Geoffrey Chaucer and the Hengwrt manuscript of the Canterbury Tales’, Chaucer Review 44 (2010), 351-67.
12. ‘Richard James and the seventeenth-century provenance of British Library MS Cotton Caligula A.XI’, Journal of the Early Book Society 13 (2010), 249-254.
13. ‘Manuscripts and Scribes’, in Susanna Fein and David Raybin eds., Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press), pp. 67-82.
14. ‘The Professionalisation of Writing’, in Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker eds., The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 57-67.
15. ‘Mapping Text and Word’, forthcoming in Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin eds., The Production of Books in England, 1350-1530 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
16. ‘Middle English Language and Poetry’, in Corinne Saunders ed., A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Blackwell, 2010), pp. 181-95.
17. ‘The Language of Chaucer’, forthcoming in Alexander Bergs and Laurel Brinton eds., Historical Linguistics of English: An International Handbook (Mouton de Gruyter).
18. ‘The Language of the Vernon Manuscript’ (with Jeremy Smith), forthcoming in Wendy Scase ed. A Digital Edition of the Vernon Manuscript (Bodleian Library).
19. ‘Chaucer and the Language’, forthcoming in Larry Scanlon ed., Palgrave Advances in Chaucer Studies (Palgrave Macmillan).
20. ‘Speaking and Writing in Suffolk speech’: the language and dialect of Osbern Bokenham’, in Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska eds., ße laurer of oure Englische Tonge (Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 9-19.
21. ‘What C.S. Lewis really did to Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde’, C.S. Lewis Society Chronicle 6:2 (2009), 20-29.
22. ‘The Scribes of the Vernon Manuscript’, forthcoming in Wendy Scase ed., The Making of the Vernon Manuscript (Brepols).
23. ‘Adam Pinkhurst and the copying of British Library MS Additional 35287 of the B Version of Piers Plowman’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 23 (2009), 61-83.
24. ‘The Edmund-Fremund Scribe Copying Chaucer’, Journal of the Early Book Society 12 (2009), 191-201.
25. ‘The Scribe of Bodleian Library MS Bodley 619 and the circulation of Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009), 109-124.
26. ‘The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College MS 244 Reconsidered’, Review of English Studies 60: 345 (2009), 371-81.
27. ‘Chaucerian Word Formation’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 110 (2009), 141-57.
28. ‘Reconsidering Lincoln’s Inn 150’ (with Alison Wiggins), Medium Ævum 77 (2008), 30-53.
29. ‘Harley 3954 and the Audience of Piers Plowman’, in Graham D. Caie and Denis
Renevey eds., Medieval Texts in Context. (Routledge, 2008), pp. 68-84.
30. ‘A manuscript found in the library of Abbotsford House and the lost legendary of Osbern Bokenham’, English Manuscript Studies 1100-1700 14 (2007), 132-164.
31. ‘Politics, Patronage, and Piety in the Work of Osbern Bokenham’, Speculum 82 (2007), 932-49.
32. ‘Teaching the language of Chaucer Manuscripts’, in Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester eds., Teaching Chaucer in the University (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 96-104.
33. ‘A new fragment of Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006), 205-215.
34. ‘Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale’, in Michael Drout ed, J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (Routledge, 2006), pp. 93-4.
35. ‘Scribe D’s SW Midlands Roots: A Reconsideration’ (with Daniel W. Mosser), Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106 (2005), 32-47.
36. ‘The scribe of Rawlinson Poetry 137 and the copying and circulation of Piers Plowman’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 19 (2005), 3-26.
37. ‘The angle of oblivioun: A lost medieval manuscript discovered in Walter Scott’s collection’, Times Literary Supplement 11 November 2005, 12-13.
38. ‘“In London and opelond”: The Dialect and Circulation of the C Version of Piers Plowman’, Medium Ævum 74 (2005), 248-69.
39. ‘Southern copies of the Prick of Conscience and the study of Middle English Word Geography’, Poetica 62 (2005), Special issue on Medieval English Dialectology, ed. Michiko Ogura, 89-101.
40. ‘A Piers Plowman Manuscript by the Hengwrt/Ellesmere Scribe and Its Implications for London Standard English’ (with Linne R. Mooney), Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004), 65-112.
41. ‘The Dialect and Authorship of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 18 (2004), 133-52.
42. ‘Pennies, Pence and Pans: Some Chaucerian Misreadings’, English Studies 84 (2003), 426-32.
43. ‘Chaucer’s Norfolk Reeve’, Neophilologus 86 (2002), 609-12.
44. ‘The English Ordinance and Custom in the Cartulary of the Hospital of St Laurence, Canterbury’ (with J.J. Smith), Anglia 120 (2002), 488-507.
45. ‘Towards a new history of Middle English Spelling’ (with M. Black and J.J. Smith), in P.J. Lucas and A.M. Lucas eds., Middle English from Tongue to Text. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002, pp. 9-20.
46. ‘Phislophye in The Reeve's Tale (Hg 4050) in Answer to Astromye in The Miller's Tale (3451)’, Notes and Queries n.s. 48 (2001), 109-110.
47. ‘J.R.R. Tolkien as a Philologist: A Reconsideration of the Northernisms in Chaucer’s Reeve's Tale’, English Studies 82 (2001), 97-105.
48. ‘The Language of the Fifteenth-Century Printed editions of the Canterbury Tales’, Anglia 119 (2001), 249-58.
49. ‘Chaucer’s Spelling and the Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales’, in I. Taavitsainen et al. eds., Placing Middle English in Context. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2001, pp. 199-208.
50. ‘Research questions and opportunity costs: the Digitisation of Middle English manuscripts and the Middle English Grammar Project’ (with J.J. Smith), in M. Deegan
and H. Short eds., DRH 99: Selected papers from Digital Resources for the Humanities 1999. London: Office for Humanities Communication, 2000, pp. 49-55.
51. ‘The Language of the Hengwrt Chaucer’, in E. Stubbs ed., A Digital Facsimile of the Hengwrt Chaucer. Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2000.
52. ‘The Middle English Grammar Project’, ICAME Journal 24 (2000), 172-4.
53. ‘The Scribe of the Helmingham and Northumberland manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales’, Neophilologus 84 (2000), 457-65.
54. ‘Some Spellings in Chaucer’s Reeve's Tale’, Notes and Queries n.s. 47 (2000), 16-8.
55. ‘A Database of Middle English Spelling’ (with J.J. Smith), Literary and Linguistic Computing 14 (1999), 359-73.
56. ‘The Middle English Grammar Project’, Journal of the Early Book Society 2 (1999), 184-7.
57. ‘Linguistic Features of the Hammond scribe’, Poetica 51 (1999), 1-10.
58. ‘A New Approach to Chaucer’s Spelling’, English Studies 79 (1998), 415-24.
59. ‘The “Hooked g” Scribe and his Work on three Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99 (1998), 411-17.
60. ‘Editorial Assumptions and the Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales’, in N.F. Blake and P. Robinson eds., The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers Volume II. London: Office for Humanities Communication, 1997, pp. 15-21.
61. ‘Additional 35286 and the Order of the Canterbury Tales’, Chaucer Review 31 (1997), 272-8.
Other Information:
Honorary Secretary, Medium Aevum: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature
Member of Editorial Board, Yearbook of Langland Studies
Member of Editorial Board, Chaucer Review
Associate Editor, Literary and Linguistic Computing
Consultant, Oxford English Dictionary
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