I took a more roundabout entry into academia. I’d gotten into drama school out of sixth form, didn’t like it, kicked myself for not having applied to read English at Cambridge (my previous allegiance) and just about scraped into my BA there. I’d not considered myself much of an academic before, let alone a first-generation student in my family, so in truth I had no idea what I was doing in my early days of studying English. Before university, my interest in the medieval—as is probably the case for many of us—snuck up on me. I’d always loved Tolkien (I distinctly remember respecting The Hobbit for not shoehorning any love plots in—Hollywood, take note). Bernard Cornwell’s series on the Hundred Years War and Saxon England made the medieval world so much more real to me. Elements of fantasy and adventure gave way in his books to stark reality, bad smells, knights soiled in blood and excrement—humanity at its most shockingly candid. It wasn’t until I began my BA that I read what some people might snobbishly call “real” medieval literature, the roots of my childhood reading. Suffice to say it was enough to make me want to deepen my research focus into this period. I still had questions to ask.
Studying for a Master’s in Medieval English at Oxford has given me the space to cast as wide a net as possible, working on twelfth-century conquest literature and the hyper-naturalisation of indigenous bodies, queer space in devotional literature, and an experimental edition of the hagiography Seinte Margarete in MS Bodley 34. Sitting for hours in the Weston Library with this manuscript, once handled by Tolkien, is something I never imagined doing, yet being trusted to handle a thirteenth-century book brought home how much postgraduates are viewed as researchers of the university, as peers to the established academics. My latest research has been into the queer bodies of late medieval books, what happens when we think of them as dying bodies, and the efforts of book collectors to suspend time through preservation. Charting how these attitudes change during the period of the Black Death, it’s been interesting to consider that perhaps medieval readers began, eventually, to see death as a natural part of the book—which I say while looking at some of my own read-to-death books. The tension between the will to preserve and the acceptance of decay is a nice reminder that not all has changed in the five-hundred-or-so years between our two worlds.
Oxford has truly felt like home in my short (too short) nine months here. What surprised me most was just how supportive and active the English Faculty is. I never imagined being able to rub shoulders with some of my academic heroes over coffee at a research seminar, let alone for them to take us students seriously. Pretty much every academic has been supportive and generous with their knowledge. The true blessing of my time here, though, has been the cohort I got to share this experience with. All medievalists seem to be a bit mad, to have an affinity for the weird and wonderful, and the countless times we’ve spent over a pint at the Lamb and Flag (our forever haunt) have seen us share our griefs, pull each other up and laugh ourselves silly. That’s what academia should be: generative, not suppressive, communal, not egocentric. I can’t wait to read all their future publications.
To say the year has been tiring but rewarding is certainly an understatement. I feel ready to take a small break before diving back in with DPhil applications, but at the same time I don’t want to leave the social scene and opportunities that Oxford offers its students. I’ve been able to continue acting in the Jesus College Shakespeare Project and in Sir Greg Doran’s production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona; I’ve been welcomed into the vibrant folk music scene (album forthcoming); I’ve been able to help my college library by transcribing our seventeenth-century Benefactors Book. It sounds like I’m singing my own praises here, but without a fulfilling life outside of academia I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy that much more precious time I had to read and write. I would urge any student, present or future, to make the most of what this small but mighty city has to offer. I dearly hope to be back doing the same.
Saul studied for their BA in English at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and has just completed an MSt in English (650-1550) at Jesus College.
