Dr Anne Marie D’Arcy

Research Interests

Dr D’Arcy specializes in later Medieval and early Renaissance texts and their contexts. Her research interests lie in the areas of medieval and Renaissance Wisdom literature, medieval and Renaissance iconology and political theology; the patristic sources of Old and Middle English literature; nineteenth and twentieth-century medievalism. She has published a number of articles that reflect these interests, and a monograph, Wisdom and the Grail: The Image of the Vessel in the Queste del Saint Graal and Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal. This study provides an iconological reading of the early thirteenth-century Queste del Saint Graal, a branch of the Vulgate or Lancelot-Graal prose cycle, and Malory’s redaction of it. It examines St Bernard of Clairvaux’s concept of the New Knighthood and its influence on the depiction of la chevalerie celestiel in the Queste, highlighting the importance of the eremitic aspect of the ecclesia primitiva (the idealized concept of the early Christian community) to contemporary monastic thought, and the influence of this concept on the knight-hermit figures in the Queste. It looks at the influence of the binary opposition implicit in the monastic tradition of action and contemplation on the Queste, and the theological concepts discernible in the romance which are specifically monastic in origin, concentrating on the writings of St Bernard and William of St Thierry. The significance of the symbol of the vessel is addressed by means of a detailed investigation of the cumulative series of events which elucidate the meaning of the grail as they occur in the course of the Queste. It also, inter alia, provides a comparative iconographic analysis and commentary on the late fourteenth or early fifteenth-century Irish translation of the Queste, Lorgaireacht an tSoidhigh Naomhtha. She has also co-edited a collection of essays on Old English and Anglo-Saxon culture, Text and Gloss: Studies in Insular Language and Literature, and a collection of essays, Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood: ‘The Key of All Good Remembrance’ .  She has written articles on Old French romance, Middle English poetry and prose, and the medieval background to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. She is currently completing The Artifice of Eternity: Mariology in the English Poetic Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010), which examines the influence of Marian theology, spirituality, liturgy, and iconography as it develops in the English poetic tradition from the turn of the twelfth century to the first half of the seventeenth.   She is also working on another book, Joyce’s Saints and Sages: The Involution of the Insular Imagination, which not only engages with the Insular and early medieval sources of Finnegans Wake, but also contains chapters on Ulysses and Joyce’s occasional writings on medieval topics. 

Current Postgraduate Supervision

Dr D’Arcy has supervised postgraduate dissertations on The Depiction of Knighthood in Malory; Margery Kempe; Visions of Hell in Middle English; The Figure of Arthur and British Nationalism; Iconologies of Justice in Medieval English Literature, and The Depiction of the Fool in Medieval Drama. She would welcome the opportunity to supervise topics in the following areas:

● Medieval and Renaissance Wisdom Literature

● Medieval and Renaissance Iconology

● Medieval and Renaissance Literature and Political Theology / Canon Law

● Medieval and Renaissance Romance

● Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain-Poet

● The influence of Monasticism and the Religious Orders on Literature, 1200-1500

● Medieval Mysticism and the Influence of Neo-Platonism in Particular

● Nineteenth and Twentieth-century Medievalism, especially James Joyce

Recent Publications

Books

Wisdom and the Grail: The Image of the Vessel in the Queste del Saint Graal and Thomas Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000). 412pp., ISBN 185182496O.

(Reviews include: Neil Thomas, Medium Ævum 71:2 (2002), 371; Elizabeth Archibald, Notes and Queries 50.1 (2003), 98-9; Julia Boffey, Medievalia et Humanistica ns 26 (2003), 130; Peter Noble, Modern Language Review 98:1 (2003), 265; Elspeth Kennedy, Medium Ævum 73:1 (2004), 158-9; Sîan Echard, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104:1 (2005), 133-5.)

(edited with Helen Conrad O’Briain and John Scattergood),

Text and Gloss: Studies in Insular Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Joseph Donovan Pheifer (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999). 214pp., ISBN 185182443X.

(edited with Alan J. Fletcher)

Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour ofJohn Scattergood: ‘The Key of All Good Remembrance’, ed. Anne Marie D’Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 100-20. 416pp., ISBN 1851829298.

Selected Articles

Li Anemis Meismes’: Satan and Synagogue in La Queste del Saint Graal’, Medium Ævum 66 (1997), 207-35.

Holy Vessell and Blyssed Bloode: Malory’s Personal Symbolism of the Grail’, in Middle English from Tongue to Text, ed. Peter J. Lucas and Angela M. Lucas, Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature 4 (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 293-318.

“Cursed folk of Herodes al new”: Supersessionist Typology and Chaucer’s Prioress’, in Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts, ed. Elaine Treharne, Essays and Studies 55 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 117-36.

The Middle English Lyric’, in Interpreting Medieval Literature: Readings of Old and Middle English Texts, ed. David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 306-22.

“Into the kirk wald not hir self present”: Leprosy, Blasphemy and Heresy in Henryson’s TheTestament ofCresseid’, in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour ofJohn Scattergood: ‘The Key of All Good Remembrance’, ed. Anne Marie D’Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 100-20.

Teaching and Administration

Dr D’Arcy is currently Course Convenor of EN2040: Medieval Literature (2004-); Library Officer (2003-); Member of External Relations Team (2002-); Member of Postgraduate Research Committee (2003-); Member of Staff-Student Consultative Committee (2002-, and Chair, 2005); SOCRATES Coordinator for Outgoing Students (2004-). She has also been Course Convenor of EN2020: Chaucer (2001-4); Careers Tutor (2002-5); SOCRATES Coordinator for Incoming Students (2001-3), and at faculty level, Arts Senior Tutor for Combined Studies BA (2001-3).

Teaching:

First Year

EN1040 The History of the English Language (Lecturer and Tutor)
EN1050 Renaissance Drama: Shakespeare and his Contemporaries  (Lecturer and Tutor)

Second Year

EN2010 Chaucer (Convenor, Lecturer and Tutor)
EN2030 Old English (Lecturer and Tutor)
EN2040 Medieval Literature (Convenor, Lecturer and Tutor)

Third Year

EN3010 Compulsory Dissertation (Supervisor)
EN3124  Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Lecturer) 

Postgraduate Teaching

M.A. in English Literary Research / MA in Humanities
Dissertation Supervisor

I also co-teach the following MA Option Modules:

Literature and the Rural
Interpreting the Past: Medieval Literature in Context

M.A. in History / MA in Humanities
I contribute to the core medieval module: Mastering Medieval Sources (convenor: Prof. N. J. Housely), teaching patristics, exegesis and canonicity.

Internet Links

'Li anemis meismes': Satan and synagogue in 'La Queste del Saint Graal.' Anne Marie D'Arcy.
      Medium Aevum Fall 1997 v66 n2 p207(29) (16400 words)

'Cursed folk of herodes al new': supersessionist typology and Chaucer's prioress. Anne Marie D'Arcy.
      Essays and Studies Annual 2002 p117(21) (9634 words)

Anne Marie D'Arcy: Wisdom and the Grail: the Image of the Vessel in the 'Queste del saint Graal' and Malory's 'Tale of Sankgreal'. (Book Review) Elspeth Kennedy.
      Medium Aevum Spring 2004 v73 i1 p158(2) (815 words

The Literature Compass