Nicholas Watson is an English-Canadian medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author. He is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English at Harvard University and chair of the Harvard English Department.[1][2]
Education and early career edit
Nicholas Watson was raised in Winchester, England.[3] After an undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge and graduate work with Vincent Gillespie at Oxford, he began his scholarly career with a 1987 dissertation at the University of Toronto on the Yorkshire hermit Richard Rolle.[3] Watson is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English at Harvard; before joining the faculty at Harvard he taught at the University of Western Ontario from 1990 to 2001.[4]
Career edit
Watson has written on vernacularity, gender, religious censorship, ritual magic, and mystical literature; he has also edited and translated important works from medieval Latin and Middle English. He is credited with introducing the concept of "vernacular theology" to literary and religious studies.[5] His scholarship has explored figures such as Julian of Norwich, William Langland, Marguerite Porete, Geoffrey Chaucer, John of Morigny, Richard Rolle, the Pearl Poet, and Archbishop Thomas Arundel.[3]
Awards edit
In 1990 he was awarded the John Charles Polanyi Prize.[6] His research has been supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Guggenheim Foundation,[7] the American Council of Learned Societies,[8] and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.[9] In 2016 he was named a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.
Works edit
- Richard Rolle and the Invention of Authority (1991)
- (with Anne Savage) Anchoritic Spirituality: Ancrene Wisse and Associated Works (1991)
- "Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409" (1995)
- Richard Rolle: Emendatio vitae and Orationes ad honorem nominis Ihesu (1995)
- (with Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans) The Idea of the Vernacular: an Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (1999)
- "The Middle English Mystics" in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (1999)
- (with Fiona Somerset) The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (2003)
- (with Jacqueline Jenkins) The Writings of Julian of Norwich: A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and A Revelation of Love (2006)
- (with Fiona Somerset) Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (2015)
References edit
- ^ "Life in Brief: Nicholas Watson". Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ "Nicholas Watson, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature". Harvard University: Dept. of English. Archived from the original on 2 April 2018. Retrieved 4 August 2015.
- ^ a b c Potier, Beth (7 February 2002). "Visions and magic: Medievalist Watson decodes some of history's most recalcitrant texts". Harvard Gazette. Harvard University. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ Rasmussen, William (18 April 2001). "Medieval Lit. Scholar Tenured". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ Rice, Nicole (3 April 2005). "Review of Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, Duncan Robertson, Nancy Warren, eds. The Vernacular Spirit: Essays on Medieval Religious Literature". The Medieval Review. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ John Charles Polanyi Prize Winners
- ^ "Nicholas Watson: Guggenheim Fellow". Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 31 March 2015.
- ^ Nicholas J. Watson F'08: ACLS Fellow
- ^ "Religion in the vernacular: Nicholas Watson traces the decline of the clergy and the rise of the laity". Harvard Gazette. Harvard University. 18 December 2008. Retrieved 31 March 2015.