Additional Information / Informations supplémentaires

Office and Office Hour / Bureau et heure de réception

Research Interests / Recherches

Fiona Tolhurst is Maître assistante in Medieval and Early Modern English at the University of Geneva. She completed a BA in English and Psychology at Rice University with both Magna cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa distinction. She then completed her MA and PhD in Medieval English Language and Literature at Princeton University, where she was a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities. Before becoming Maître assistante in Medieval and Early Modern English at Geneva, she was Professor of English at Alfred University and held short-term appointments at the Universities of Basel, Bern, Freiburg in Breisgau, Geneva, and Neuchâtel.

Her main research interests are the translation of the Arthurian legend from Latin into French and English, the portrayal of women in historical and literary texts, and the lives and writings of women mystics.

Publications

Books and Monographs / Livres et monographies

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Feminist Origins of the Arthurian Legend (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

(editor, with Bonnie Wheeler) On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries (Dallas, TX: Scriptorium Press, 2001).

(editor) Theoretical Approaches to Geoffrey of Monmouth, special issue, Arthuriana 8.4 (Winter 1998).

Selected Articles and Chapters / Sélection d'articles et de chapitres

‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Secularized Salvation in Le Morte Darthur’, in Malory and Christianity: Essays on Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, eds. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. and Janet Jesmok (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, 2013), pp. 127-56.

‘Beyond the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis as Closet Arthurian’, Arthuriana 22.4 (Winter 2012): 140-66.

‘Helping Girls to Be Heroic?: Some Recent Arthurian Fiction for Young Adults’, Arthuriana 22.3 (Fall 2012): 69-90.

‘The Radical, Yet Orthodox, Margery Kempe’, in Sacred and Profane in Chaucer and Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honour of John V. Fleming, eds. Robert Epstein and William Robins (Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 179-204. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/13925/11.11.28.html? sequence=1

‘C.S. Lewis’, in Arthurian Writers: A Biographical Encyclopedia, eds. Laura Cooner Lambdin and Robert Thomas Lambdin (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008), pp. 249-64.

‘Why We Should Teach—and Our Students Perform—The Legend of Good Women’, in Teaching Chaucer (Teaching The New English Series), eds. Gail Ashton and Louise M. Sylvester (New York: Palgrave Macmillan Publishers, 2006), Chapter 3, pp. 46-64.

‘Why Every Knight Needs His Lady: Re-viewing Questions of Genre and ‘Cohesion’ in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’, in Re-viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes, eds. K.S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu (Woodbridge, England: Boydell and Brewer, 2005), Chapter 9, pp. 133-47.

‘The Great Divide?: History and Literary History as Partners in Medieval Mythography’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 30.1 (Spring 2004): 7-27.

‘What Ever Happened to Eleanor?: Reflections of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Wace’s Roman de Brut and Lawman’s Brut’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Lord and Lady, eds. John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Press, 2003), Chapter 15, pp. 319-36. ‘The Outlandish Lioness: Eleanor of Aquitaine in Literature’, Medieval Feminist Forum Vol. 37 (Spring 2004): 9-13.

‘The Once and Future Queen: The Development of Guinevere from Geoffrey of Monmouth to Malory’, Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society 50 (1998): 272- 308.

Current Projects

Monograph: working title, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich as Feminist Theologians.

“Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as Contemporary Cult Figures.” Invited submission for Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture, ed. Gail Ashton (London: Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2014).