معرفی
Dr Daniel Sawyer is a Departmental Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Oxford's Faculty of English Language & Literature, affiliated with St Hilda's College. His research focuses on medieval literature, the history of the book, and manuscript studies. He specializes in Middle English poetry, textual editing, and the cultural history of reading practices. Sawyer has authored How to Read Middle English Poetry (2024) and Reading English Verse in Manuscript c.1350–c.1500 (2020), which explore medieval verse-craft and historical reading methodologies. His work bridges literary analysis with interdisciplinary approaches, including statistical modeling of manuscript survival and queer interpretations of medieval-inspired modern poetry. He contributes to major editorial projects like the Wycliffite Bible and Cambridge Chaucer editions.
Research interests include forgotten manuscripts, the formation of literary canons, and medieval language dynamics. He examines how medieval texts were read, edited, and preserved, with particular attention to marginal voices and material conditions of texts. His recent articles address topics such as unrecorded proverbs, Chaucer's linguistic contexts, and the intersection of queer studies with medieval literary forms.
Teaching focuses on making medieval literature accessible to beginners while advancing scholarly debates. He has published pedagogical works and engages in public scholarship through articles on teaching methodologies. Current projects include studies on regular rhyme in English, the invention of blank verse, and gendered authorship in medieval verse.
Sawyer collaborates on interdisciplinary research, including applications of ecological statistics to cultural survival and codicological analysis of religious texts. His work frequently highlights the materiality of manuscripts and their role in shaping literary history, while also exploring modern reinterpretations of medieval themes in contemporary poetry.
