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School of English

Raluca Radulescu, BA, MPhil, PhD

Raluca Radulescu

Name:

Raluca Radulescu

Position:

Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature

Email:

Location:

213 New Arts

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 382110

Background

Educated at University of Bucharest (BA) and Manchester (MPhil, PhD), Dr Radulescu has  taught at the Universities of Manchester, Trinity College Dublin and François Rabelais, Tours, and held fellowships at New Europe College, Institute for Advanced Studies, (Bucharest), Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris) and the Huntington Library (as Andrew Mellon fellow).

Responsibilities

  • Centre for Medieval Studies (director; College level)
  • Director of Graduate Studies (school level)
  • Pastoral team (school level)
  • Teaching and learning committee (school level)
  • MA in Arthurian Literature (director)
  • MA in Medieval Studies (co-director)

 Teaching

Medieval and early modern literature, literary theory, palaeography and codicology, the Arthurian legend (medieval to present)

Postgraduate

  • QXE4011 Open Essay

  • QXE4015 Introduction to Literary Theory, Scholarship and Research

  • QXE4016 Pre-modern Travel (co-coordinator)

  • QXE4025 Manuscripts and Printed Books (coordinator)

  • QXE4030 Medieval Arthur (coordinator)

  • QXE4031 Post-Medieval Arthur (co-coordinator)

  • QXE4090 MA Dissertation (coordinator)

  • KAH 4401 Understanding the Middle Ages (co-coordinator)

Undergraduate

Year 1

  • QXE1003: Heroes and Villains: Introduction to Medieval Literature

  • QXE1005 Travellers’ Tales

  • QXE1010 Approaches to Literature A

  • QXE1011 Approaches to Literature B

Year 2

  • QXE2101 Medieval Literature (coordinator)
  • Special Author

Year 3

  • QXE3034 Arthurian Literature (coordinator)
  • QXE3090 Chaucer
  • QXE3094 Realms of Magic (coordinator)

Research profile

My research has focused in particular on the development of medieval romance (Arthurian and non-Arthurian) and its relationship with other genres, from a reception approach. My study of reception is grounded in book history, in other words exploring the manuscript contexts in which the texts I discuss were copied and circulated.  These interests are reflected in my publications, from a monograph on Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur to five collaborative projects I initiated and edited, on romance, chronicles, and genealogical literature. I have recently completed a second monograph, Romance and Its Contexts in Fifteenth-century England: Politics, Piety and Penitence, and am co-editing two collections of essays, (with Margaret Connolly) Insular Books: Vernacular Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, and (with Catalina Girbea and Laurent Hablot) Markers of Identity in Medieval Europe, 12th -15th c. The latter are the product of two international research networks I have initiated and am co-coordinating.

I am a member of the following research clusters:

Cultures of War and Conflict Resolution Research Network
(Medieval and Early Modern)
Please visit the new culturesofwar.bangor.ac.uk website

Pre-Modern Travel Research Network (PREMOT)
Please visit the new premot.bangor.ac.uk website

CARMEN (Co-operative for the Advancement of Research through a Medieval European Network)
http://carmen.eldoc.ub.rug.nl/root/

Postgraduate supervision

I welcome postgraduate projects linked to any of the above areas, especially those of an interdisciplinary nature. I am currently supervising research students whose work focuses on the following topics: the translation and reception of three Middle English Merlin romances; the Orient in medieval and early modern romance; the Grail in medieval and modern literature; chorography and the Arthurian legend in the medieval and early modern period.

Major publications

Books

Romance and Its Contexts in Fifteenth-century England: Politics, Piety and Penitence (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, forthcoming August 2013) ISBN: 9781843843597

Image of the book cover 'Broken Lines

The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003).

co-ed., Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, series Studies in Medieval Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2009). Includes Introduction and own chapter.

co-ed., Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France, series Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, vol. 16 (Turnhout: Brepols,

  2008). Includes Introduction and own chapter.

co-ed., Readers and Writers of the Brut Chronicles, Trivium 36 (2006).  Contains own chapter, ‘Gentry Readers of Brut and Genealogical Material’, pp. 189-202.


Image of book cover Gentry culture in Late Medieval England
co-ed., Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005).  Own chapter, ‘Literature’, 100-18, and co-written ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-18.

co-ed., Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005). Own chapter ‘“Oute of measure”: Violence and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 119-31.

 

Selected articles and chapters

‘Preparing for Her Mature Years: the Case of Margaret of Anjou’, in Middle Aged Women in the Middle Ages, ed. Sue Niebrzydowski (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2011), pp. 84-98.

 ‘How Christian is Chivalry?’, in Christianity and Romance in Medieval England, eds Rosalind Field, Phillipa Hardman and Michelle Sweeney (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 69-83.

‘Pious Romances Turned Political: the Case of Isumbras, Sir Gowther and Robert of Sicily’, Viator 41:2 (Fall 2010), 333-59.

‘Malory and the Grail’, chapter 22 in A Companion to Arthurian Literature, ed. H. Fulton (Maldon, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), pp. 326-39.

‘Malory’s Lancelot and the Key to Salvation’, Arthurian Literature 25 (2008), 93-118.

‘Writing Nation: Shaping Identity in Medieval Historical Narratives’, chapter 21 in Companion to Medieval English Literature c.1350-1500, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford:  Blackwell, 2007), pp. 358-73.

‘Ballad and Popular Romance in the Percy Folio’, Arthurian Literature 23 (2006), 68-80.

‘Gentry Readers of Brut and Genealogical Material’, in Readers and Writers of the Brut Chronicles, see reference above.

‘“Now I take uppon me the adventures to seke of holy thynges’: Lancelot and the Crisis of Arthurian Knighthood’, in Textual Traditions of Mediaeval Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of P.J.C. Field, ed. B. Wheeler(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 285-95.

‘Sir Thomas Malory and Fifteenth-Century Political Ideas’, Arthuriana 13:3 (2003), 36-51.

‘Yorkist Propaganda and the Chronicle from Rollo to Edward IV’ (inclusive of appendix which contains an edition of the chronicle), Studies in Philology 100.4 (2003), 401-24.

Membership of editorial boards and professional associations

  • 2011-2014 - Editor, Journal of the International Arthurian Society and Annual Bibliography of the International Arthurian Society
  • From 2011- editor of BBIAS (Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society)
  • From 2010 - Welsh representative on the UK National Association of Medievalists
  • From 2007 - contributor to the medieval section of Year's Work in English Studies (sections on romance, Malory, and Caxton)
  • From 2007 - member of the committee of AMARC (Association for Manuscripts and Archives in Research Collections)
  • From 2007 - AHRC peer review college member (member of the AHRC Languages and Literatures panel for Fellowships in 2011 and for Main Grants in 2012)
  • From 2007 - member of the editorial board of the medieval section of 'Literature Compass' journal
  • From 2005 - Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies
  • 2006-2008 - co-convenor, IMEMS research seminars
  • 2005-7 and 2007- Organiser of interdisciplinary doctoral training in medieval palaeography and codicology (AHRC funded 2005-7, then by Bangor College of Arts and Humanities)
  • 2002-10  Member, Committee of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society
  • 2006-8 UK and Ireland Liaison Officer, Carmen (Confederation for the Advancement of Research through a Medieval European Network)

Other

  • 2011: 'Sword in the Stone' documentary for the National Geographic TV Channel, in the series 'The Ancient X-Files'
  • 2010 Invited on the ‘Authoring Arthur’ special event organised by the Royal Shakespeare Company in connection with the staging of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
  • 2009 BBC Radio consultant on the Tennyson programme and Arthurian myth