Alastair J. Minnis (born 1948) is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature, and contributed substantially to the study of late-medieval theology and philosophy. Having gained a first-class B.A. degree at the Queen's University of Belfast, he matriculated at Keble College, Oxford as a visiting graduate student, where he completed work on his Belfast Ph.D. (awarded 1975), having been mentored by M.B. Parkes and Beryl Smalley. Following appointments at the Queen's University of Belfast (Lecturer, 1972–81) and Bristol University (Lecturer, later Reader, 1981–87), he was appointed Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York; also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies and later Head of English & Related Literature. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University, Columbus, from where he moved to Yale University. In 2008, he was named Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale.[1]
Minnis is a Fellow of the English Association (2000), a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (2001),[2] and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy (2016).[3] From 2012 to 2014, he served as president of the New Chaucer Society.[4] He was general editor of the Cambridge University Press series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature from 1987 to 2018 and holds an honorary master's degree from Yale (2007) and an honorary doctorate from the University of York (2018). The University of York also bestowed on him the honorific title of Emeritus Professor of Medieval Literature (2018).[5][6] He has long been involved in the activities of the John Gower Society and currently holds the post of vice president.[7] In 2023, he received a festschrift edited by Andrew Kraebel, Ardis Butterfield, and Ian Johnson.[8]
Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1982). 200 pages.
["As a recreation of fourteenth-century historical awareness this book does something new and important. The argument throughout is reinforced by Minnis's thorough knowledge of late medieval thought and commentary... Minnis offers the best account I have read of the functions of Troilus's soliloquy on necessity and Theseus's First Mover speech ...'. Speculum]
Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984). Revised editions 1988, 2009. 323 pages.
['No professional medievalist with a serious interest in literature can afford to leave this book unread'. British Book News ]
(ed.) The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of 'De Consolatione Philosophiae' (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1987). 197 pages.
(with A.B. Scott, ed.), Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c.1100 c.1375: The Commentary Tradition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 538 pages. Revised ed. 1991.
['Superbly executed, this is an extremely impressive and important book for medievalists, literary critics, theorists and cultural historians alike. It will be a standard work for a long time'. Times Higher Education Supplement]
(ed.) Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, 1 (Cambridge & Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989). 190 pages.
Chaucer's Shorter Poems. [Includes contributions by V.J. Scattergood and J.J. Smith.] (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 578 pages
['Minnis is the best equipped of all British medievalists for this Borgesian task. His extraordinary wide reading in both critical and contextual materials is in evidence throughout the book. ... Minnis's open engagement with recent political criticism is to be commended ...'. Times Literary Supplement]
(ed., with C. C. Morse and T. Turville-Petre), Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). 358 pages.
(ed., with Peter Biller), Medieval Theology and the Natural Body, York Studies in Medieval Theology I (York: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell and Brewer, 1997). 244 pages.
(ed., with Peter Biller), Handling Sin: Confession in Late-Medieval Culture, York Studies in Medieval Theology II (York: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 1998). 219 pages.
(ed., with Tim William Machan), The Sources of Chaucer’s ‘Boece’ (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2005).
Magister Amoris: The ‘Roman de la Rose’ and Vernacular Hermeneutics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 352 pages. A Kindle edition was issued in 2011.
['I have not seen an equally persuasive and textually supported account of this encyclopedic narrative. There is no better and more stimulating introduction to one of the most controversial and influential vernacular texts of the European Middle Ages'. Archiv]
(ed., with Ian Johnson), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2: The Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 866 pages. [An Arabic language translation was subsequently published]
(ed., with Jane Roberts), Text, Image, Interpretation: Studies in Anglo-Saxon Literature and its Insular Context in Honour of Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).
Fallible Authors: Chaucer’s Pardoner and Wife of Bath (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Monograph of 520 pages.
['a witty and immensely informative study'. Speculum]
Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature: Valuing the Vernacular (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Monograph of 272 pages.
['Minnis slaloms down the steep slopes of scholastic theology with virtuosic ease and rapidity ... an impressive book that anyone interested in arguments about vernacular theology and English orthodoxy, or anyone interested in how Alastair Minnis continues to write so well and so much, will want to read'. Notes and Queries]
(ed., with Rosalynn Voaden), Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition, c.1100–c.1500 (Brepols, Turnhout, 2010). A reference book of 748 pages.
(ed., with Stephen Rigby). Historians on Chaucer: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 503 pages.
The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
['[this book] conveys a continuing enjoyment and delight in reading and interpreting Chaucer's writings. By mixing the experience of a lengthy teaching career with the authority of his widely admired scholarship, Minnis encourages us to pause, observe, take stock, and share the wonders and conundrums of Chaucer's achievement. We are in the hands of an expert guide who knows his own mind ...'. Speculum]
From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages. A monograph of 392 pages with 32 color illus. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).
['Like all of Minnis's work, it is impressively learned and couched in fluent and charming prose. . . . To read the book through, moreover, is to receive not only a thorough review of medieval ideas about Paradise but an excellent introduction to medieval scholasticism. . . . In addition to his remarkable learning, Minnis is a fine literary critic, and I know no other medievalist capable of presenting work so learned with his deftness and subtlety'. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology]
Hellish Imaginations from Augustine to Dante: An Essay in Metaphor and Materiality, Medium Ævum Monographs n.s. 37 (Oxford: The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2020).
Phantom Pains and Prosthetic Narratives: From George Dedlow to Dante, Cambridge Elements in Histories of Emotions and the Senses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Contributions to books (since 2015)edit
"Unquiet Graves: Pearl and the Hope of Reunion", in Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media, ed. Nicholas Watson & Fiona Somerset (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 117–34.
"Discourse beyond death: The Language of Heaven in the Middle English Pearl", in Language in Medieval Britain: Networks and Exchanges, ed. by Mary Carruthers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 25 (Shaun Tyas: Donington, 2015), pp. 214–28.
"Reconciling amour and yconomique: Evrart de Conty's Ambition as Vernacular Commentator", in Traduire au XIVe siècle : Evrart de Conty et la vie intellectuelle à la cour de Charles V, ed. by Joëlle Ducos and Michèle Goyens (Éditions Honoré Champion: 2015), pp. 199–222.
"Other Worlds: Chaucer's Classicism", in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Volume 1: 800-1558, ed. by Rita Copeland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 413–434.
"Figuring the letter: Making sense of sensus litteralis in late-medieval Christian Exegesis", in Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Overlapping Inquiries, ed. Mordechai Z. Cohen and Adele Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 159–182. (The outcome of work by a research group based at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.)
"The Prick of Conscience and the Imagination of Paradise", in: Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts. Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna, edited by Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 127–40.
"Secularity", in Geoffrey Chaucer in Context, ed. by Ian Johnson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 178–86, 453-54.
Periodical articles (since 2010)edit
"Image Trouble in Vernacular Commentary: The Vacillations of Francesco da Barberino", in Inventing a Path: Studies in Medieval Rhetoric in Honour of Mary Carruthers, ed. Laura Iseppi de Filippis; a special issue of Nottingham Medieval Studies, 56 (2012, actually published 2013), 229-245.
"Chaucer Drinks What He Brews: The House of Fame, 1873-82", Notes and Queries, 16 April (2014).
"The Restoration of All Things: John Bradford's Refutation of Aquinas on Animal Resurrection", The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 45.2 (2015), pp. 323–42.
"Fragmentations of Medieval Religion: Thomas More, Chaucer, and the Volcano Lover", Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 37 (2015), pp. 3–27. [The 2014 Presidential Address to the New Chaucer Society]
"Aggressive Chaucer: Of dolls, drink and Dante", The Medieval Translator, 16 (2016), 357-76. Edited by Pieter de Leemans and Michele Goyens.
"Bending Augustine's nose. Or How to Authorize Sexual Pleasure", The Medieval Journal, 8.2 (2018), 1–20.
Referencesedit
^"Alastair Minnis Appointed the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor". YaleNews. 18 July 2008. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
^"Fellows – The Medieval Academy of America". www.medievalacademy.org. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
^"Alastair Minnis: Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. | English". english.yale.edu. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
^"Past Officers – New Chaucer Society". newchaucersociety.org. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
^"Alastair Minnis". yale.edu. Retrieved 15 April 2017.
^"A Brief History of the John Gower Society" (PDF). Retrieved 21 December 2023.
^Butterfield, Ardis; Johnson, Ian; Kraebel, Andrew (20 April 2023). Literary Theory and Criticism in the Later Middle Ages: Interpretation, Invention, Imagination. Cambridge University Press. ISBN978-1-108-49239-3. Retrieved 19 December 2023.
External linksedit
Alastair Minnis at Yale University website
January 01, 1970
alastair, minnis, this, biography, living, person, needs, additional, citations, verification, please, help, adding, reliable, sources, contentious, material, about, living, persons, that, unsourced, poorly, sourced, must, removed, immediately, from, article, . This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification Please help by adding reliable sources Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page especially if potentially libelous Find sources Alastair Minnis news newspapers books scholar JSTOR February 2021 Learn how and when to remove this message Alastair J Minnis born 1948 is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature and contributed substantially to the study of late medieval theology and philosophy Having gained a first class B A degree at the Queen s University of Belfast he matriculated at Keble College Oxford as a visiting graduate student where he completed work on his Belfast Ph D awarded 1975 having been mentored by M B Parkes and Beryl Smalley Following appointments at the Queen s University of Belfast Lecturer 1972 81 and Bristol University Lecturer later Reader 1981 87 he was appointed Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of York also Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies and later Head of English amp Related Literature From 2003 to 2006 he was a Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University Columbus from where he moved to Yale University In 2008 he was named Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale 1 Minnis is a Fellow of the English Association 2000 a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America 2001 2 and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy 2016 3 From 2012 to 2014 he served as president of the New Chaucer Society 4 He was general editor of the Cambridge University Press series Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature from 1987 to 2018 and holds an honorary master s degree from Yale 2007 and an honorary doctorate from the University of York 2018 The University of York also bestowed on him the honorific title of Emeritus Professor of Medieval Literature 2018 5 6 He has long been involved in the activities of the John Gower Society and currently holds the post of vice president 7 In 2023 he received a festschrift edited by Andrew Kraebel Ardis Butterfield and Ian Johnson 8 Contents 1 Selected publications 1 1 Major books and edited collections 1 2 Contributions to books since 2015 1 3 Periodical articles since 2010 2 References 3 External linksSelected publications editMajor books and edited collections edit Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity Woodbridge Boydell and Brewer 1982 200 pages As a recreation of fourteenth century historical awareness this book does something new and important The argument throughout is reinforced by Minnis s thorough knowledge of late medieval thought and commentary Minnis offers the best account I have read of the functions of Troilus s soliloquy on necessity and Theseus s First Mover speech Speculum ed Gower s Confessio amantis Responses and Reassessments Cambridge D S Brewer 1983 202 pages Medieval Theory of Authorship Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages London Scolar Press 1984 Revised editions 1988 2009 323 pages No professional medievalist with a serious interest in literature can afford to leave this book unread British Book News ed The Medieval Boethius Studies in the Vernacular Translations of De Consolatione Philosophiae Woodbridge Boydell and Brewer 1987 197 pages with A B Scott ed Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c 1100 c 1375 The Commentary Tradition Oxford Clarendon Press 1988 538 pages Revised ed 1991 Superbly executed this is an extremely impressive and important book for medievalists literary critics theorists and cultural historians alike It will be a standard work for a long time Times Higher Education Supplement ed Latin and Vernacular Studies in Late Medieval Texts and Manuscripts York Manuscripts Conferences Proceedings Series 1 Cambridge amp Woodbridge Boydell and Brewer 1989 190 pages Chaucer s Shorter Poems Includes contributions by V J Scattergood and J J Smith Oxford Clarendon Press 1995 578 pages Minnis is the best equipped of all British medievalists for this Borgesian task His extraordinary wide reading in both critical and contextual materials is in evidence throughout the book Minnis s open engagement with recent political criticism is to be commended Times Literary Supplement ed with C C Morse and T Turville Petre Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J A Burrow Oxford Clarendon Press 1997 358 pages ed with Peter Biller Medieval Theology and the Natural Body York Studies in Medieval Theology I York York Medieval Press in association with Boydell and Brewer 1997 244 pages ed with Peter Biller Handling Sin Confession in Late Medieval Culture York Studies in Medieval Theology II York York Medieval Press in association with Boydell and Brewer 1998 219 pages ed with Tim William Machan The Sources of Chaucer s Boece Athens and London University of Georgia Press 2005 Magister Amoris The Roman de la Rose and Vernacular Hermeneutics Oxford Oxford University Press 2001 352 pages A Kindle edition was issued in 2011 I have not seen an equally persuasive and textually supported account of this encyclopedic narrative There is no better and more stimulating introduction to one of the most controversial and influential vernacular texts of the European Middle Ages Archiv ed with Ian Johnson The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism vol 2 The Middle Ages Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2005 866 pages An Arabic language translation was subsequently published ed with Jane Roberts Text Image Interpretation Studies in Anglo Saxon Literature and its Insular Context in Honour of Eamonn o Carragain Turnhout Brepols 2007 Fallible Authors Chaucer s Pardoner and Wife of Bath Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 2007 Monograph of 520 pages a witty and immensely informative study Speculum Translations of Authority in Medieval English Literature Valuing the Vernacular Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2009 Monograph of 272 pages Minnis slaloms down the steep slopes of scholastic theology with virtuosic ease and rapidity an impressive book that anyone interested in arguments about vernacular theology and English orthodoxy or anyone interested in how Alastair Minnis continues to write so well and so much will want to read Notes and Queries ed with Rosalynn Voaden Medieval Holy Women in the Christian Tradition c 1100 c 1500 Brepols Turnhout 2010 A reference book of 748 pages ed with Stephen Rigby Historians on Chaucer The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales Oxford Oxford University Press 2014 503 pages The Cambridge Introduction to Chaucer Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2014 this book conveys a continuing enjoyment and delight in reading and interpreting Chaucer s writings By mixing the experience of a lengthy teaching career with the authority of his widely admired scholarship Minnis encourages us to pause observe take stock and share the wonders and conundrums of Chaucer s achievement We are in the hands of an expert guide who knows his own mind Speculum From Eden to Eternity Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages A monograph of 392 pages with 32 color illus Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press 2015 Like all of Minnis s work it is impressively learned and couched in fluent and charming prose To read the book through moreover is to receive not only a thorough review of medieval ideas about Paradise but an excellent introduction to medieval scholasticism In addition to his remarkable learning Minnis is a fine literary critic and I know no other medievalist capable of presenting work so learned with his deftness and subtlety The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Hellish Imaginations from Augustine to Dante An Essay in Metaphor and Materiality Medium AEvum Monographs n s 37 Oxford The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature 2020 Phantom Pains and Prosthetic Narratives From George Dedlow to Dante Cambridge Elements in Histories of Emotions and the Senses Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2021 Contributions to books since 2015 edit Unquiet Graves Pearl and the Hope of Reunion in Truth and Tales Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media ed Nicholas Watson amp Fiona Somerset Columbus Ohio State University Press 2015 pp 117 34 Discourse beyond death The Language of Heaven in the Middle English Pearl in Language in Medieval Britain Networks and Exchanges ed by Mary Carruthers Harlaxton Medieval Studies 25 Shaun Tyas Donington 2015 pp 214 28 Reconciling amour and yconomique Evrart de Conty s Ambition as Vernacular Commentator in Traduire au XIVe siecle Evrart de Conty et la vie intellectuelle a la cour de Charles V ed by Joelle Ducos and Michele Goyens Editions Honore Champion 2015 pp 199 222 Other Worlds Chaucer s Classicism in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature Volume 1 800 1558 ed by Rita Copeland Oxford Oxford University Press 2016 pp 413 434 Figuring the letter Making sense of sensus litteralis in late medieval Christian Exegesis in Interpreting Scriptures in Judaism Christianity and Islam Overlapping Inquiries ed Mordechai Z Cohen and Adele Berlin Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2016 pp 159 182 The outcome of work by a research group based at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem The Prick of Conscience and the Imagination of Paradise in Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna edited by Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde Turnhout Brepols 2016 pp 127 40 Secularity in Geoffrey Chaucer in Context ed by Ian Johnson Cambridge Cambridge University Press 2019 pp 178 86 453 54 Periodical articles since 2010 edit Image Trouble in Vernacular Commentary The Vacillations of Francesco da Barberino in Inventing a Path Studies in Medieval Rhetoric in Honour of Mary Carruthers ed Laura Iseppi de Filippis a special issue of Nottingham Medieval Studies 56 2012 actually published 2013 229 245 Chaucer Drinks What He Brews The House of Fame 1873 82 Notes and Queries 16 April 2014 The Restoration of All Things John Bradford s Refutation of Aquinas on Animal Resurrection The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 45 2 2015 pp 323 42 Fragmentations of Medieval Religion Thomas More Chaucer and the Volcano Lover Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 2015 pp 3 27 The 2014 Presidential Address to the New Chaucer Society Aggressive Chaucer Of dolls drink and Dante The Medieval Translator 16 2016 357 76 Edited by Pieter de Leemans and Michele Goyens Bending Augustine s nose Or How to Authorize Sexual Pleasure The Medieval Journal 8 2 2018 1 20 References edit Alastair Minnis Appointed the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor YaleNews 18 July 2008 Retrieved 19 December 2023 Fellows The Medieval Academy of America www medievalacademy org Retrieved 19 December 2023 Alastair Minnis Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy English english yale edu Retrieved 19 December 2023 Past Officers New Chaucer Society newchaucersociety org Retrieved 19 December 2023 Alastair Minnis yale edu Retrieved 15 April 2017 worldcat org Retrieved 15 April 2017 A Brief History of the John Gower Society PDF Retrieved 21 December 2023 Butterfield Ardis Johnson Ian Kraebel Andrew 20 April 2023 Literary Theory and Criticism in the Later Middle Ages Interpretation Invention Imagination Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 1 108 49239 3 Retrieved 19 December 2023 External links editAlastair Minnis at Yale University website Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Alastair Minnis amp oldid 1220160807, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
