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Nicholas Perkins

After studying for an undergraduate degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge, Dr Nicholas Perkins moved into the later medieval period for his graduate research, which centred around the early fifteenth-century bureaucrat, poet and melancholic Thomas Hoccleve. He still works on aspects of Hoccleve’s writing and political literature in the late middle ages. His other research interests include manuscripts and readers of Middle English poetry, the uses that medieval writers made of the Bible, and a current major project on gifts and narratives in the medieval period. He curated an exhibition at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, called The Romance of the Middle Ages, and hosted the 2012 Romance in Medieval Britain conference. He is also interested in modern creative responses to the medieval past.

Series featuring Nicholas Perkins

  • Alumni Weekend
  • Valentine's Day at Oxford
  • Challenging the Canon
# Episode Title Description People Date
3 Medieval Romance and the Gift of Narrative Dr Perkins gives a talk for the 2013 Oxford Alumni Weekend. Nicholas Perkins 14 Oct 2013
2 Creative Commons Why should we study medieval romance? Dr Nicholas Perkins of St Hugh's College, Oxford, discusses his current research and proposes why we should still study medieval romance. Nicholas Perkins, Sarah Wilkin 12 Aug 2013
1 Creative Commons The Romance of the Middle Ages Dr Nicholas Perkins talks about how romance functions as a genre in the middle ages, especially about how gifts and tokens were exchanged as signs of fidelity, specifically in Sir Orfeo, Sir Gawain, and King Horn. Nicholas Perkins 21 Jun 2012