Thomas Crofts

THOMAS CROFTS

Associate professor, dept. of Literature and Language

East Tennessee State University

‘And kynge Arthure was so blody that by hys shylde there myght no man know him, for all was blode and brayne that stake on his swerde and on hys shylde.'

--Malory, Le Morte Darthur

British Library Add. MS 59678, f. 35r--The Winchester Manuscript

Education

'Burning must be added to knowledge.'--St Bernard.

B.A. Bard College, 1990

M.Phil. Trinity College, Dublin, 1992

M.A. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1997

Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003

Interests

'Je prends mon bien partout où je le trouve.'--Molière

Teaching: Old and Middle English literature, Greek and Latin, 17th century poetry, Anglo-Irish literature

Research: Sir Thomas Malory, medieval Arthurian literature, 14th-15th century poetry

Publications

'Against the disease of writing one must take special precautions, since it is a dangerous and contagious disease.'--Abelard

Book

Malory’s Contemporary Audience: The Social Reading of Romance in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006)

Book Chapters, Articles and Reviews

Review of Christianity and Romance in Medieval England, eds Field, Hardman and Sweeney Arthuriana 21.1 (2011)

"The Occasion of the Morte Arthure: Textual History and Marginal Decoration in the Thornton MS", Arthuriana 20.2 (2010)

"Death in the Margins: Dying and Scribal Performance in the Winchester Manuscript", The Arthurian Way of Death: The English Tradition, eds Karen Cherewatuk and K. S. Whetter (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009)

(with Robert Allen Rouse) "Middle English Popular Romance and National Identity", A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, eds Raluca L. Radulescu and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009)

"What is he, this Lordling, that cometh from the fyht'', Companion to British Poetry before 1600, ed. Michelle M. Sauer (New York: Facts on File, 2008)

"Perverse and Contrary Deeds: The Giant of Mont Saint Michel and the Alliterative Morte Arthure”, in The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain, eds A. Hopkins and C. Rushton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007)

Review of Latin Arthurian Literature by Mildred Leake Day, Arthuriana 16.1 (2006)

“Malory’s Moral Scribes: Marginalia, Exemplarity and ‘Balyn le Sauvage’ in the Winchester Manuscript”, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire no. 83 (2006)

“‘thynges forsayd aledged’: Historia and argumentum in Caxton’s Preface to the Morte Darthur”, in Re-viewing Malory, eds R. Radulescu and K. Whetter (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005)

Edition

The Cavalier Poets: An Anthology (New York: Dover Publications, 1996)

Poems