Dutton, Dr Elisabeth
Job Title: Supernumerary Fellow
College: Worcester
Period/ Subject: Medieval & Early Modern
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Research Interests: 
Medieval and early-Tudor drama; Medieval mystical and devotional literature; Medieval manuscripts and compilation.
Teaching Areas:
Medieval literature especially drama, mystical and devotional writings; medieval women's writing; Shakespeare; Old English; History of the Language.
Recent Publications
Monograph:
Julian of Norwich: the Influence of Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008). This book combines study of compilation manuscripts and mansucripts of Julian's Revelation of Love to suggest significant new ways of reading the Revelations; it also makes a case for compilation, often seen reductively as a defensive mode of writing, as instead a literary form with creative potential
Edited Books:
John Gower:Trilingual Poet, ed. Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R.F. Yeager (Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, in press, forthcoming Sep 2010)
Julian of Norwich: the Influence of Late-Medieval Devotional Compilations (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008). This book combines study of compilation manuscripts and mansucripts of Julian's Revelation of Love to suggest significant new ways of reading the Revelations; it also makes a case for compilation, often seen reductively as a defensive mode of writing, as instead a literary form with creative potential
Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love, ed. Elisabeth Dutton (Lanham, Md; Plymouth: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008)
Hadewijch: Writer, Beguine and Love-Mystic (Leuven: Peeters, 2004) Paul Mommaers, with Elisabeth Dutton. A substantially revised and re-shaped translation of Professor Mommaers’ prize-winning Flemish book: this book is now the first in English on Hadewijch.
Articles and Chapters:
- ‘Child-killing and the blood ritual in late-medieval literature’, an invited contribution to Children and Violence, ed. Laurence Brockliss (Oxbow Books, forthcoming, 2010).
- ‘A neglected witness to Chaucer’s Boece in a medieval devotional commentary on The Consolation of Philosophy’, in Lectures exégétiques I: Exégèses et commentaires vernaculaires au Moyen Age en France et dans les Iles Britanniques (XIIe - XVe s.) –manuscrits, textes et contexts, eds T. Hunt & J.-P. Pouzet (Brepols, forthcoming)
- ‘Augustine Baker and the Medieval Mystical Canon’, Elisabeth Dutton and Victoria Van Hyning, in Proceedings of the English Benedictine History Symposium, Sep. 2009, a volume in honour of James Hogg, editor of Analecta Carthusiana. Submitted to editors.
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‘Secular Medieval Drama’, in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Medieval Literature, eds. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker
- ‘The Seventeenth-Century Manuscript Tradition and the Influence of Augustine Baker’, in A Companion to Julian of Norwich, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy (Cambridge, 2008) 127-38
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‘Henry Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres: Words and Sense in the Staging of Late Medieval Drama’, The Medieval Translator 10 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) 435-48
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Response to Elizabeth Archibald, ‘Incest between Adults and Children in the Medieval World’, in Children and Sexuality from the Greeks to the Great War, ed. George Rousseau (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) 103-8
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‘Augustine Baker and Two Manuscripts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelation of Love,’ Notes and Queries, New Series 52, no.3 (Sep. 2005) 329-37
‘Christ as Codex: Compilation as Literary Device in Book to a Mother’, Leeds Studies in English, New Series 35 (2004) 81-100 -
‘Textual disunities and ambiguities of mise-en-page in the manuscripts containing Book to a Mother’, Journal of the Early Book Society, 6 (2003) 140-59
Other Information:
Dr Elisabeth Dutton's research into medieval and Tudor drama is informed by her staging of it. She founded Thynke Byggly, a group which draws actors from within the University and also from outside, and which stages rarely-performed pieces, sometimes for general audiences and sometimes for academic conferences. Thynke Byggly performances aim to bring to life early drama which has theatrical qualities that cannot be appreciated 'on the page'. Among other plays, Elisabeth Dutton has directed:
Henry Medwall, Fulgens and Lucres, (Magdalen College New Rooms, Dec. 2002)
Rituals in Blood: Drama of medieval anti-semitism, a double-bill of the late-medieval Croxton Play of the Sacrament with Steven Berkoff’s Rituals in Blood (Magdalen College Auditorium, Nov. 2005)
John Skelton, Magnyfycence, at the Medieval English Theatre conference (Sheffield, March 2007); subsequently also staged at Worcester College (Dec. 2007). This production was reviewed by Peter Happé in Ben Jonson Journal vol.15 no. 1 (2008) pp.100-106
'B.J.’, The Tragical History of Guy of Warwick, a play published 1661 but probably written in the 1590s: staged for the Malone Society Conference (Oxford, Sep. 2008). This production was discussed by Adam Smyth in the Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 28th 2008
The Mary Plays from N-Town, with members of the Worcester College Choir (Worcester College Chapel, Oxford, Dec. 2009)
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