JANE TOSWELL
Professor
University College 53 Office Hours: |
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My primary research concerns the most popular text available in Anglo-Saxon England, the biblical
book of psalms. I principally study psalter manuscripts, especially the bilingual psalters in prose and
poetry which account for about a fifth of the surviving texts in Old English (English as it was spoken
and written before about 1100). At the moment, with my colleague M.S. Griffith at New College,
Oxford, I am editing the longest surviving poem in Old English, a translation of the psalms known
as the Paris Psalter. I also publish on the codicology of early medieval manuscripts; that is, the
preparation and compilation of copies of texts before the thirteenth century. Finally, I also work
in the field of medievalism, the modern reception of the Middle Ages, and have published on a
range of modern British and Canadian responses to the medieval period. In my spare time I
teach and read speculative fiction, both science fiction and fantasy; read in the field
of academic freedom and governance; and serve as an affiliate member of the Department of
Women's Studies and Feminist Research.