Dr Francis Leneghan

I work on Old English (i.e. pre-Norman Conquest) literature, in particular heroic poetry, biblical translation, and writing associated with King Alfred. 

My recent monograph, The Dynastic Drama of Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon Studies 39 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), unravels the web of Scandinavian royal legends known to the original audience of Beowulf. The book offers a new interpretation of the work’s structure based on the principle of the dynastic life-cycle and provides explanations for features of the poem that have never been satisfactorily explained, most famously its many digressions and episodes. Highlighting the work’s originality, it proposes that the poet created a fictionalized monster-slaying hero and inserted him into royal legend in order to dramatize moments of dynastic crisis. It also brings into focus the poet’s debt to biblical paradigms of kingship and shows how the Anglo-Saxons came to read Beowulf as their own Book of Kings. As a follow-up project, I am writing a short essay on connetions between the poem and the Staffordshire Hoard.

Together with Dr Amy Faulkner (UCL), I am co-organiser of a major international research project involving over 40 scholars: The Age of Alfred. This aims to re-evaluate English literary culture c.850-950, including the question of what we mean by “Alfredian”. As well as the traditional corpus of texts associated with the king, namely the Old English Pastoral Care, Boethius, Soliloquies and Prose Psalms, we are equally interested in works often placed outside of this traditional canon, such as the Old English Bede, Orosius and Dialogues, the Domboc and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Literature produced at the West-Saxon court will be considered alongside Welsh and continental literary culture. Likewise, investigations into the vernacular works of the Alfredian period will be complemented by consideration of literature in Latin, while work on pre- and post-Alfredian literature will situate the traditional corpus in a broader context. My own book will explore how English writers in the late-ninth and early-tenth centuries revoiced works by respected figures such as King David, Gregory the Great, Bede, Augustine and Orosius in order to fashion a recognisable and authoritative Alfredian voice. The project will also result in the publication of a collection of essays and a freely available online database of Alfredian texts alongisde their Latin sources, with modern English translations.

Another area of research is the reception of the Bible, in particular the Book of Psalms, in medieval England. Along with Professor Susan Gillingham (Theology) and Dr Helen Appleton (English), I am a founder and co-organiser of The Oxford Psalms Network, an interdisciplinary research group hosted by The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) and devoted to the study of all aspects of the Psalms. In 2020 this project was chosen as a REF-Impact Case Study for the Theology Faculty.

Related to this research, I have co-edited two volumes of essays on medieval English psalms: with Tamara Atkin, The Psalms and Medieval English Literature: From the Conversion to the Reformation (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017); and with Helen Appleton, The Psalms in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman England, special edition of English Studies, 98.1 (2017). In 2013, I co-organised with Tamara Atkin and Ruth Ahnert the Psalm Culture conference at Queen Mary Univeristy, London.

Together with Kazutomo Karasawa (Rikkyo) and Mark Atherton (Oxford), I am co-organiser of an international research project From East to West: the Idea of the World in Anglo-Saxon England. Through a series of symposia, conferences and other events, this project brings together scholars from aross the world to explore early English ideas about space and place, nation and identity, and geography and history. We are currently putting together a volume of essays connected to this research. My own contribution focuses on the compilation of MS Cotton Tiberius B.i, an eleventh-century anthology of historical and religious wriitng in Old English prose and verse. 

In 2020, I am co-organising with Dr Rachel Burns and Dr Rafael J. Pascual the 32nd annual meeting of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM), which is taking place at Oxford: SELIM-32

With Professor Henrike Lähnemann (Medieval and Modern Languages), I co-direct Oxford Medieval Studies, a TORCH Programme devoted to the promotion of interdisciplinary medieval studies. 

I am Associate Editor for The Year's Work in English Studies for Old and Middle English.