Prof. Dr. Neil Cartlidge

Curriculum Vitae

Neil Cartlidge works on the cultural, social and intellectual history of the Middle Ages, focusing particularly on Middle English literature, and its relationships with works in Latin and French (which were living languages in England for much of the medieval period). Much of his current research is addressed to themes and motifs that have a resonance throughout medieval Europe; and he has become increasingly interested in the way that such ideas have both fed – but also continue to challenge – the construction of the Middle Ages as an idea that suits the purposes and preoccupations of modernity. He also has particular research interests in the history of attitudes to the law (and legal relationships such as marriage); debate-poetry, dialogues and drama; medieval romances; and the works of Chaucer. Within English Studies, he is perhaps best known as the most recent editor of The Owl and the Nightingale, the first long comic poem in the English language.

He studied English Literature at Clare College in Cambridge, and completed his doctorate there in 1995 under the direction of the Professor of Medieval Latin, Peter Dronke. He then held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford until 1998, when he was appointed to a lectureship at St John’s College, Oxford. In 1999 he moved to University College Dublin; and in 2006 he took up his current position at Durham University.

In 2002–2003, he was a Humboldt Research Fellow at the University of Freiburg; another Humboldt Fellowship took him to the Free University of Berlin in 2011.