The PhD candidate will be working on a subproject within the ERC Starting Grant research project “Early Medieval English in Nineteenth-Century Europe [EMERGENCE]”, funded for 2024-2028 by the European Research Council (ERC), and directed by Dr. Thijs Porck (Senior Lecturer in Medieval English at Leiden University).
EMERGENCE project In the 19th century, German scholars dominated the study of the language and literature of early medieval England; the first editors and scholars of the Old English epic Beowulf were Danes; Old English texts were claimed as part of the Dutch literary canon in the Low Countries; some of the first ‘popular’ adaptations of Old English material appeared in French, Dutch, Danish and German; and non-Anglophone scholars discovered important Old English documents in archives all across the European continent. This multi-faceted European, transnational reception of Old English is the focus of the EMERGENCE project, which seeks to identify and analyze engagements with early medieval English across 19th-century Europe. The project, situated on the intersection of history of humanities and medievalism studies, is powered by a bibliographical and relational database and a multi-disciplinary, multilingual approach. It will reveal new, insightful materials, uncover intellectual networks and put forgotten protagonists in the limelight. A full description of the project and all its subprojects can be found here:
https://thijsporck.com/emergence/.
PhD-project: The Search for Anglo-Saxon Christianity in 19th-century Europe: Cædmon, Cynewulf and the Continent Since the 16th century, religious concerns have motivated the study of Old English and its speakers. In the 19th century, scholars turned to the study of Old English literature in particular to find traces of pre-Christian, ‘Germanic’ religion, as discussed in Eric G. Stanley’s seminal work The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (1975). However, the 19th century also saw an increasing interest in intrinsically Christian literature, notably the poems attributed to Cædmon and Cynewulf. These engagements with Old English religious texts happened during “a revolutionary age” for Christianity in 19th-century Europe and the role of religion, therefore, deserves further scrutiny. What motivated European scholars to engage with Old English religious texts? How did religious concerns, alongside politics, literary interests and other motivational factors, shape their engagements with these Old English texts and vice versa? The PhD student in this project will answer these questions by exploring the lives, works and correspondence of a select number of scholars, including N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872; Danish preacher, poet and politician), Joseph Bosworth (1788-1876; English lexicographer and chaplain in Amsterdam and Rotterdam), Karl Wilhelm Bouterwek (1809-1869; German church historian and editor of Old English religious texts) and Christian Wilhelm Michael Grein (1825-1877; German editor of Old English prose and poetry).
Key responsibilities - You will complete a PhD thesis (in English) within four years;
- You will contribute to the project’s bibliographical and relational database by collecting and entering relevant metadata about 19th-century publications and scholars;
- You will conduct research on the 19th-century reception of Old English;
- You will publish a (co-authored or single-authored) article in a peer-reviewed journal and contributing to an edited volume on the 19th-century reception of Old English;
- You will participate in (bi)weekly meetings of the project research group;
- You will present at least 3 papers at conferences, both in the Netherlands and internationally;
- You will participate in the training programme of the LUCAS Insti