Rebecca F McNamara
The University of Western Australia, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Honorary Research Associate
My research focuses on the literature and language of medieval England and the history of emotions in medieval Europe. I am currently a Lecturer of medieval literature in the Department of English at UCLA. I am also an Honorary Research Associate with the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (CHE), and in 2016 I was a Mayers Research Fellow at The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. I completed a Master of Studies and Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where I also worked as Junior Dean of Exeter College and a College Tutor in English literature. From 2011-2014 I held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Australian Research Council's Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (CHE), and in 2014 I was an Associate Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Sydney.
My current research on the suicidal impulse in medieval English literature and culture and the history of emotions builds on my interest in medieval legal and government texts by identifying and theorizing emotions related to suicide in England c. 1200-1500. I examine portrayals of self-murder (including suicide attempts) in English legal records, chronicles, and literary works, tracing a trajectory of emotions related to the suicidal impulse from c. 1200-1500. As part of this project I am interested in connecting with scholars in neuroscience and psychology, as well as medical practitioners, social workers, and counselors in order to consider links in the history of emotions related to suicide in the medieval past and the present.
I am also interested in the effects of language on literary form and meaning, and, more broadly, the impact of historical change upon language. These core ideas shaped my doctorate, ‘Code-Switching in Medieval England: Register Variety in the Literature of Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Usk, and Thomas Hoccleve’ (2010, University of Oxford). I examined the ways in which Chaucer, Usk, and Hoccleve’s professional textual environments in law, London guilds, factional politics, and bureaucracy influenced their literary writing. I reconsidered the identifications of what kinds of language these men considered appropriate for literature, and I maintained that the variety of linguistic register in their works challenges our retrospectively created boundaries of England’s late medieval vernacular language.
My current research on the suicidal impulse in medieval English literature and culture and the history of emotions builds on my interest in medieval legal and government texts by identifying and theorizing emotions related to suicide in England c. 1200-1500. I examine portrayals of self-murder (including suicide attempts) in English legal records, chronicles, and literary works, tracing a trajectory of emotions related to the suicidal impulse from c. 1200-1500. As part of this project I am interested in connecting with scholars in neuroscience and psychology, as well as medical practitioners, social workers, and counselors in order to consider links in the history of emotions related to suicide in the medieval past and the present.
I am also interested in the effects of language on literary form and meaning, and, more broadly, the impact of historical change upon language. These core ideas shaped my doctorate, ‘Code-Switching in Medieval England: Register Variety in the Literature of Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Usk, and Thomas Hoccleve’ (2010, University of Oxford). I examined the ways in which Chaucer, Usk, and Hoccleve’s professional textual environments in law, London guilds, factional politics, and bureaucracy influenced their literary writing. I reconsidered the identifications of what kinds of language these men considered appropriate for literature, and I maintained that the variety of linguistic register in their works challenges our retrospectively created boundaries of England’s late medieval vernacular language.
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https://soundcloud.com/emotions_make_history
The article originally appeared as "The Sorrow of Soreness: Infirmity and Suicide in Medieval England," Parergon 31.2 (2014), 11-34.
This presentation will focus on just a few examples of uses of emotion within the law that seem to precede formulaic constructions of those emotions in later medieval legal and administrative documents. These examples will include: the use of the verb ‘to feel’, showing that ‘to feel’ seems to crystalize into a formulaic usage just following its use in statutes concerning the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt; and the use of ‘fear’ in statutes passed in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V to legislate against the threat of Lollardry (and the subsequent crystalization of ‘fear’ as formulaic in statutes promulgated from the reign of Henry VI onward). Where time allows, I will also touch on uses of these emotion terms within documents related to legal cases, drawing excerpts from Eyre and Assize Rolls, Coroners’ Rolls, and writs from the crown in the Calendar of Close Rolls.
These uses of emotion within the statutes prompt us to ask how the language of medieval governance drew from and contributed to the rhetoric surrounding two notoriously volatile events/ groups of people of late medieval England. More broadly, this short analysis seeks to open up for discussion the place of emotional language within the law: were emotions appropriate for governance in late medieval England?
https://soundcloud.com/emotions_make_history
The article originally appeared as "The Sorrow of Soreness: Infirmity and Suicide in Medieval England," Parergon 31.2 (2014), 11-34.
This presentation will focus on just a few examples of uses of emotion within the law that seem to precede formulaic constructions of those emotions in later medieval legal and administrative documents. These examples will include: the use of the verb ‘to feel’, showing that ‘to feel’ seems to crystalize into a formulaic usage just following its use in statutes concerning the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt; and the use of ‘fear’ in statutes passed in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V to legislate against the threat of Lollardry (and the subsequent crystalization of ‘fear’ as formulaic in statutes promulgated from the reign of Henry VI onward). Where time allows, I will also touch on uses of these emotion terms within documents related to legal cases, drawing excerpts from Eyre and Assize Rolls, Coroners’ Rolls, and writs from the crown in the Calendar of Close Rolls.
These uses of emotion within the statutes prompt us to ask how the language of medieval governance drew from and contributed to the rhetoric surrounding two notoriously volatile events/ groups of people of late medieval England. More broadly, this short analysis seeks to open up for discussion the place of emotional language within the law: were emotions appropriate for governance in late medieval England?