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Sarah Lancaster

Languages and Literature, University of Nottingham

Thesis title:

What then do I love, when I love my God?: Divine personae and the human subject in the devotional culture of late fourteenth-century Yorkshire.

My research asserts the particular value of devotional works for evidencing experiences of selfhood, interiority and shared identity. Representations of the deity in these texts construct an implied human subject in the image of its creator, and their prescription of correct devotional behaviours indicates contemporary ideals surrounding inner life, physical behaviour, and social interaction. I am interested in examining the ways in which these late medieval explorations of the human subject both contextualise and interrogate subsequent conceptions of selfhood.

Research Area

  • English Language and Literature
  • Languages and Literature

Conferences

Regional Spaces: Speaking through Landscape in Yorkshire Literature (University of Nottingham, School of English, March 2022). Talks and Q&A with three contemporary Yorkshire writers. Host and organiser. Funded by the Centre for Regional Literature and Culture.


Deictic shift in the fourteenth-century lyric 'Ich herde men upo molde' (University of Nottingham, School of English Distance Learning Colloquium, March 2021). Exploring the implications of Deictic Shift Theory for exploring medieval lyric voicing.




Other Research Interests

  • Vernacular theology
  • Regionalism
  • Subjectivity
  • Cognitive poetics