Detailed Information for Peter Fields

Book:             On April 17, 2001, The Edwin Mellen Press brought out my book Craft and Anti-Craft in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. A little less than half of it served as my Ph.D. dissertation in 1994. The book concerns Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, medieval rhetoric (Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova), usage of the term craeft/craft in Old and Middle English works culminating in Chaucer, as well as Latin precedents. At issue is proto-humanist epistemology in Early English Literature, with reference to Cicero, Boethius, Augustine, and Aquinas. All translation of Old English and Latin is my own.

 

Editor            In Geardagum: Essays on Old and Middle English (1999-2011). Annual publication of The Society for New Language Study.  Assumed editorship as of vol. 20. The journal is a juried publication that uses a "double blind" system to assess submissions. The Society for New Language Study and In Geardagum, its principal publication, were founded in Denver, Colorado, in the 1970's by the University of Denver medievalist, Raymond P. Tripp, Jr. The last issue was vol. 30.

 

Secretary       Assumed full secretarial duties (archives, subscription, and mailing of the journal In Geardagum) after death of Dr. Tripp in 2005. In 2009-2010, assisted MSU professor & noted myth scholar Evans Lansing Smith in trouble-shooting, printing, and mailing copies of the annual journal he founded and edited, New Myth.  The Society for New Language Study is now an archive for past issues of IG and other publications by the Society.

 

                       Past Editor. Served as editor of the inaugural issue of WordView: Studies in Literary Epistemology (Winter 1996). Sponsored by the Society for New Language Study.

Essay

in Anthology  

                       "Ironic Revelation in Springsteen." Ch. 10 of Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen. Ed. Roxanne Harde and Irwin Streight. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2010. 201-222.

 

Articles          "God be at your table! Cup, Minister, and Perverse Gospel in Shakespeare's Hamlet." Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature. [Ed. Nicholas Wallerstein and Roger Ochse] 9 (2002): 7-25.

                       

                       "Thomist Metaphysics, Idealism, and Owen Barfield: Towards an Epistemological Criticism." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology [Ed. Paul Neumarkt] 20.3-4 (August 2000): 178-87.      

 

                       "The Missal of Robert of Jumieges: A Review Article."  In Geardagum [Ed. Raymond P. Tripp, Jr.] 16 (1995): 9-32. Much more than a review per se: I examined the newly-reprinted Latin missal (reflecting early 11^th/late 10^th century English worship) in depth, and provided my own translation and annotation of its unique features, including its numerous prefaces for important feasts, collects for the late 10^th century English saint Edward Martyr, unique pre-Sarum Holy Week language derived from Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid, and some rubrics for anointing the sick in Old English.

 

                       "Bawdy Games, Cosmic Union, and Palimpsestic Continuity in Wolfgang Rudat's Earnest Exuberance in Chaucer's Poetics." Review in In Geardagum [Ed. Raymond P. Tripp, Jr.] 15 (1994): 99-103.

 

                       "Chaucer's Cecile as Christian Humanist Disputer of the Sacred." In Geardagum [Ed. Raymond P. Tripp, Jr.] 15 (1994): 29-39. I argue that Chaucer's saint's legend is more internalized (and less miraculous) than Old English and Latin precedents.

 

Presentations

                        Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011, presented my paper "The Outlaw Catholic Cosmic Bruce" for the Bruce Springsteen session of the 65th annual convention of the Rocky Mountain branch of the Modern Language Association (RMMLA) in Scottsdale, Arizona. 

 

                        Saturday, October 16, 2010, presented my paper "The In-Between from St. Gregory's Dialogues to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones" for the Literature & Religion session of the 64th annual convention of the Rocky Mountain branch of the Modern Language Association (RMMLA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

 

                        Thursday, October 8, 2009, for the Old and Middle English session of the 63^rd annual convention of the Rocky Mountain branch of the Modern Language Association (RMMLA), presented my paper "Free Among the Dead: Applying Augustine and the Psalms to Old English Elegy" in Snowbird, Utah.

 

Thursday, October 9, 2008, for the English Renaissance Literature session of the 62^nd annual convention of the RMMLA, presented my paper "Undividable Incorporate: The Problem with Marital Emblems in Golding, Shakespeare, and Spenser" in Reno, Nevada.

 

Thursday, October 4, 2007, for the Owen Barfield session of the 61^st annual convention of the RMMLA, presented my paper "Infinite Desire and Final Participation in Spenser's Faerie Queene and Lewis's Narnia Chronicles" in Calgary, Alberta.

 

Thursday, October 12, 2006, for the Old and Middle English session of the 60^th annual convention of the RMMLA, presented my paper "Þonne cymð se Antecrist: Apocalyptic Theology in Ælfric's Catholic Homilies" in Tucson, Arizona.

 

Thursday, October 20, 2005, for the Old and Middle English session of the 59^th annual convention of the RMMLA, presented my paper "Waciað georne: Earnest Vigil in Old English Prayer and Elegy" in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

 

                        Friday, October 1, 2004, at the 58^th annual convention of the RMMLA, for English Renaissance Literature session, presented my paper, "Can you not hate me? Helena's Self-Loathing in A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Boulder, Colorado.

 

                        Saturday, May 8, 2004, at the 39^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (Western Michigan University) for the Old English Poetry session, presented my paper, "Astigendum in Seað: Descent to the Pit in OE Psalm and Elegy."

 

                        Thursday, October 9, 2003, at the 57^th annual convention of the RMMLA, for the English Renaissance Literature session, I presented my paper, "Mixt and joyned both in One: Hermaphroditus in Arthur Golding's 1567 Ovid's Metamorphoses" in Missoula, Montana.  

 

                        Friday, May 9, 2003, at the 38^th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (Western Michigan University) for the session "Beowulf: Are We Talking to the Poem?"  (sponsored by The Society for New Language Study), presented my paper "Beowulf 424b: ond nu wið Grendel sceal: now and must in Beowulf."

                       

                        Thursday, October 10, 2002, at the 56^th annual convention of the RMMLA, for the Old and Middle English session, presented my paper "Beowulf 2657b: þæt he ana scyle: The Anglo-Saxon Subjunctive in Comparison with Latin and Modern English" in Scottsdale, Arizona.

 

                        Friday, October 12, 2001, at the 55^th annual convention of the RMMLA, for the Shakespeare session, presented my paper "Irony and Classical Rhetoric in Shakespeare" in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

 

                        April 27, 2001: Presented my paper "'God be at your table!': Cup, Minister, and Perverse Gospel in Shakespeare's Hamlet" at the 9^th annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature at Black Hills State University, Spearfish, South Dakota.

 

                        Friday, October 13, 2000, at the 54^th annual convention of the RMMLA, for the Owen Barfield session, presented my paper "Dawn Treading: Owen Barfield's 'True Metaphor' in C. S. Lewis and William Morris" in Boise, Idaho. 

 

                        April 15, 2000. Presented my paper "Mutam Nequiquam, 'In Vain to Silence': Aspects of Catullus in Shakespeare, Milton, and Gray" at the 8th annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (Beginnings through 18^th century) at Dordt College, Iowa.

 

                        Saturday, October 10, 1998, at the 52^nd annual convention of the RMMLA, for the Owen Barfield session, presented my paper "Owen Barfield and Epistemological Criticism" in Salt Lake City, Utah.

 

                        March 14, 1998. Presented my paper "True Self in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and the Elegy of Catullus" at the 23^rd annual convention of the Missouri Philological Association, St. Louis University, Missouri.