Mary Frances Brown
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Department of French and Italian
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Statement of Interests
I work on texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in French, Latin, Occitan, and Catalan. My approach takes account of the Middle Ages' alterity (the shifting relation between Latin and the vernaculars, a manuscript culture in which texts have a distinct mode of existence) and finds its theoretical basis in medieval discussions of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy. In my current large project, "The Shattering Mirror: Encyclopedism as Literary Practice in Medieval France," I show how the predominant role of rhetoric in the medieval episteme permits a fertile exchange between encyclopedic and poetic or courtly writing in the thirteenth century. My other interests include courtly lyric (the troubadours and trouvères), philosophical poetry, and medieval humanism.
Publications
"Encyclopedias" and "Vincent of Beauvais." The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Oxford University Press (forthcoming 2007).