Inaugural Professorial Lecture – Professor Simone Marshall

The Good Scribe: Lessons from the Quill
About Professor Simone Marshall's research

Simone is recognised as a world expert in 15th-century English literature, and on the afterlives of Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry.

She has recently been invited to write a biography of Geoffrey Chaucer (Wiley/Blackwell), which will show how Chaucer's life has been hijacked over the centuries to suit the socio-political needs of writers and readers.

With the assistance of two Marsden grants, Simone has written two monographs, the first, The Female Voice, argues that female authorship has been largely ignored in contemporary scholarship on medieval literature. The second monograph, The Anonymous Text: The 500-Year History of The Assembly of Ladies, argues that literary anonymity was often a strategy used by marginalised people to express their dissent.

In 2011, Simone identified a previously unknown edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer from 1807. This discovery has changed international views about the Chaucer corpus, and revealed how Chaucer has been used to uphold conservative white attitudes for centuries.

This lecture will be followed with light refreshments, tea, coffee and juice.