Monika Otter

Title: Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Office: 209 Sanborn
Phone: 646-2933
Departmental Web site: Monika Otter

Medieval and Renaissance Courses Taught

• English 18 (History of the English Language)
• English 19 (Beowulf and Old English)
• English 20 (Chaucer: Canterbury Tales), 21 (Chaucer: Troilus and the Dream Poems), 22, 65 (Special Topics) and 70 (Senior seminar)
• COLT 21 (Topics in Medieval Literature, e.g., "Medieval Song," "Tristan and Isolt," "King Arthur and Medieval Chivalric Romance")
• Latin 28 (Literature of the Late Empire and the Middle Ages)

Areas of Research Interest

• Medieval Latin literature
• Historiography
• Hagiography
• Romance

Important and/or Recent and/or Major Publications

Books

• "The Book of Encouragement and Comfort: Goscelin's Letter to the Recluse Eva" (an annotated translation of Goscelin of St. Bertin's "Liber Confortatorius," with a historical introduction and an essay entitled "Inclusae Exclusus: Gender, Exile, and Desire." Library of Medieval Women, series editor Jane Chance. Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer. 2004.
• "Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing." Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 1996.

Essays

•  "Functions of Fiction in Historical Writing." Writing Medieval History: Theory and Practice for the Post-Traditional Middle Ages, ed. Nancy Partner. Hodder and Arnold, 2005.
• "Prolixitas Temporum: Futurity in Medieval Historical Narratives." Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning. Eds. Robert Stein and Sandra Prior. U. of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
• "Baudri of Bourgueil, 'To Countess Adela'" [verse translation of Baudri of Bourgueil's "Adelae Comitissae," a 1300-line encyclopaedic poem, ca. 1100, with extensive explanatory notes and an introduction]. Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 61-142.
• "La Vie des deux Offa, L'enfance de Saint Edmond, et la logique des antécédants." Médiévales 38 (2000), 17-34.
• "Ten-Sixty-Six: The Anonymous Life of St. Edward and William of Malmesbury's Life of St. Wulfstan as Narratives of Change." Speculum 74.3 (July 1999): 565-86.
• "Closed Doors: An Epithalamium for Queen Edith, Widow and Virgin." Constructions of Widowhood ad Virginity in the Middle Ages, ed. Angela J. Weisl and Cindy Carlson (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 63-92.
• "The Temptation of St. Æthelthryth." Exemplaria 9 (1997): 139-63.

Forthcoming

• "Neither/Neuter: Hildebert's Hermaphrodite and the Medieval Latin Epigram." Peer-reviewed article, forthcoming in Sudi Medievali (2007).