Raymond Cummings

Raymond’s research interests predominantly involve issues of subjectivity, textuality and rhetorical strategising in late Medieval and early Renaissance literary cultures. His past doctoral research in Discourses of Anxiety in Late Medieval Literary Traditions has introduced him to a wide variety of lexicographic, theological, philosophical and literary subject matter and authors, and allowed him to engage the texts of writers of the 5th and 6th centuries, such as the Desert Fathers Evagrius and John Cassian, through to courtly writers of the 15th and 16th centuries that include Charles d’Orleans, James 1st of Scotland, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. His primary research interests lie with Chaucer’s self-displayed disciple, Thomas Hoccleve, and also female writers of the Middle Ages such as Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe and Christine de Pisan. Facilitated through the support of the Research Office at St. Mary’s University College, Raymond’s connections with the Medieval Research Cluster at The Queen’s University of Belfast have played a key role in allowing him to currently work on a series of articles on:

1. the editorial procedures of the Oxford English Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary in connection with his research into Thomas Hoccleve;
2. the location and cultural mapping of medieval London via a series of fifteenth century English poets.