Rosemary O'Neill joined the Department of English at Kenyon in 2011 after teaching at Haverford College and the University of Pennsylvania. Her research and teaching take up the literature of later medieval England, with a particular interest in how religious practices shaped the poetry of writers such as Chaucer, Langland and the Pearl-Poet.
At Kenyon, she teaches courses on medieval drama, medieval women writers and literature and religion in medieval England a freshman seminar investigates the topic of marriage in literature from Plato to the present. She is completing a book project which explores the medieval image of the individual conscience as an account book, arguing that discourses of salvation in medieval England were shaped by divergent traditions of financial accounting. A new project investigates the history of the concept of family in Middle English literature. Her research has been supported by grants from the British Academy and the Medieval Academy.
Areas of Expertise
Medieval literature, history of the book, Chaucer.
Education
2009 — Doctor of Philosophy from University of Pennsylvania
2000 — Bachelor of Arts from Univ Chicago
Courses Recently Taught
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors assign frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
Each section of these first-year seminars approaches the study of literature through the exploration of a single theme in texts drawn from a variety of literary genres (such as tragedy, comedy, lyric poetry, epic, novel, short story, film and autobiography) and historical periods. Classes are small, offering intensive discussion and close attention to each student's writing. Students in each section are asked to work intensively on composition as part of a rigorous introduction to reading, thinking, speaking and writing about literary texts. During the semester, instructors will frequent essays and may also require oral presentations, quizzes, examinations and research projects. This course is not open to juniors and seniors without permission of the department chair. Offered every year.
J.R.R. Tolkien was not just a beloved novelist but also a distinguished scholar who edited, translated and analyzed medieval poetry including "Beowulf," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." In this course, we study the literature that gave rise to Tolkien's fiction in order to explore how medieval literature continues to shape contemporary popular culture. In this vein, our reading of medieval texts pays particular attention to "popular" genres such as purgatory vision narratives, romances and drama. While our reading primarily focuses on the medieval narratives that inspired Tolkien, there are occasional student-led opportunities to connect this medieval material to Tolkien's own fiction and poetry. This counts toward the pre-1700 requirement for the major. Open only to first-year and sophomore students. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104.
From the invention of Valentine's Day to the notion of love as a sickness and to the articulation of courtship as a game with specific rules, many of our ideas about and expectations for romantic love come to us from medieval literature. Yet in the popular medieval genre of adventure story known as "romance," things do not always go according to love's rules: Men fall in love with other men, women resist getting married, and married women seduce their unsuspecting houseguests. In this course, we explore the complex messages about love and sex encoded in medieval romances. Our readings include poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer, the anonymous romances "Roman de Silence" and "Amis and Amiloun," Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun's "Romance of the Rose," and the rules of love offered by both Ovid and Capellanus, as well as other medieval texts and contemporary works of theory and criticism. This counts toward the pre-1700 requirement for the major and the women's and gender studies major/concentration. Open only to first-year and sophomore students. Prerequisite: ENGL 103 or 104.
With a focus on major works — "Troilus and Criseyde," "The House of Fame," "The Legend of Good Women" and "The Canterbury Tales" — we consider Chaucer in the context of medieval literature and as a writer who anticipates modern questions of gender and authority. Reading in Middle English and exploring the social and historical contexts of Chaucer's fictions, we pay special attention to his preoccupations with the experience of reading, the revisioning of romance, the metamorphosis and translation of texts, and the status of the book itself. This counts toward the pre-1700 requirement for the major. Prerequisite: junior standing or ENGL 210-291 or permission of instructor.
