Speaker: Bex Lyons

Abstract:

The experience of reading medieval – and indeed any – literature can open windows on to new worlds and novel encounters for the reader, with occasionally surprising consequences. This talk considers the ways in which reading medieval romance changed the life of a working class academic from a council estate, and presents some examples from medieval romance to show what this genre is capable of: fantasy, magic, love, chivalry – but most of all offering meetings with people from the past. It highlights the value in finding common ground with those from different contexts to our own, and how medieval literature can – perhaps unexpectedly – point us in the direction of shared human experience.

Bio:

Dr Bex Lyons, Executive Assistant and Teaching Associate in English and Personal Development, Department of English. Bex is a late medievalist with research interests in book and reading history, particularly female owners and readers of Arthurian literature in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England and their interactions with this corpus. Bex also has research interests in digital academic publishing - an area in which she has a professional background as an editor. She is especially interested in the production of modern editions and translations of medieval texts, and the effects of the digital on modern academic research and publishing. Between 2015-2017 Bex was the Research Associate at University College London on the two-year AHRC and British Library funded project, The Academic Book of the Future.

*The Best of Bristol lecture series is open to members of the public.

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Medieval Romance: Unexpected Journeys and Meetings