Michael Lysander Angerer

Supervisor: Professor Laura Ashe

Research Interests: Translation theory, narrative theory, multilingualism and multilingual manuscripts, national identity, medieval historiography, Arthurian romance, verse poetics

I am a literary historian and translation theorist, and I work on the medieval literatures of Northwestern Europe. I am particularly interested in setting English literature in its European context, to see how multilingual interactions and translation processes shape vernacular texts and manuscripts. My approach is fundamentally comparative – accordingly, I work across Old and Middle English, Latin, Old French, Old Norse, Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Middle Dutch and Middle High German. My work, ranging from early medieval epics to Arthurian history and romance, is published or forthcoming in the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Exemplaria, Saga-Book, and New Medieval Literatures. For my first article on Old English and Old Saxon biblical epics, I was awarded the 2023 Paul E. Szarmach Article Prize.

My doctoral research, supervised by Laura Ashe, concerns the role of translation in changing practices of historical poetry in and beyond England between c.900 and c.1250. Using translation theory, I bridge the gaps between Old English, Latin, Anglo-Norman and early Middle English. This allows me to trace the developments from the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to the translated verse chronicles of twelfth-century England, which accommodate increasingly complex multilingual and multi-ethnic identities. I also examine how the translation of history shapes the emergence of Arthurian verse romances, which are then quickly translated across Europe.

Having grown up in Austria, I came to the UK to read for a BA in English and French at Oriel College, as part of which I spent a year abroad at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. I then took up the Jeremy Griffiths Memorial Studentship at St Hilda’s College to complete an MSt in English (650–1550). My DPhil at Corpus Christi College is funded by the E. K. Chambers Studentship.

In 2023–24, I am teaching Prelims Paper 2 (Early Medieval Literature, 650–1350) at Worcester College.

Peer-Reviewed Publications:

— ‘Arthurian Worldbuilding Around the Round Table: Wace’s History, Chrétien’s Fictions, and Continental Romance’, New Medieval Literatures (forthcoming 2024)

— ‘Domesticating Prophecy in Verse: The Translation Strategy and Politics of Merlínusspá’, Saga-Book, 47 (2023), 5–26

— ‘Translatio Studii as Literary Innovation: Marie de France’s Fresne and the Cultural Authority of Translation’, Exemplaria, 34.4 (2022), 341–62

— ‘Beyond “Germanic” and “Christian” Monoliths: Revisiting Old English and Old Saxon Biblical Epics’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 120.1 (2021), 73–92