Contact: michael.reid(a.t.)uni-tuebingen.de

Biographical Information

•    Since 10/2021 Research Assistant and PhD student in the research training group 1808 “Ambiguity – Production and Perception” at the University of Tübingen
•    01/2021 - 01/2022 Copy Editor for the Institute of Classical Philology and Comparative Literature at the University of Leipzig
•    10/2017 - 09/2020 M.A. English Philology at the University of Leipzig
•    10/2017 - 07/2020 Teacher of academic writing for the Institute of English Philology at the University of Leipzig
•    10/2002 - 07/2005 B.A. Philosophy and Literature at the University of Warwick, UK

Research interests

• History of literary forms, medieval to modern
• Medieval narrative and culture
• Theory of character
• Heroic literature
• Literature, myth and religion
• Literature and LInguistics

Abstract: "Ambiguity and character: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the legacy of medieval literature"(working title)

Although people often speak of certain characters, both real and fictional, as being ambiguous, it’s an open question as to how ambiguity actually works in relation to such complex entities as characters. The first part of my dissertation project explores the question of what makes a literary character ambiguous, focusing on the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This is a poem whose use of ambiguity has often been noted but seldom treated to a rigorous analysis, and whose nuances of characterization have been justly celebrated but not yet fully understood in the light of ambiguity. Using the resources of linguistics, semiotics and philosophy, as well as those of literary analysis, I will ask how it is that the poem not only enables but also actively deploys multiple incompatible interpretations of its characters.
The literary use of ambiguity is not ahistorical, and the second part of my dissertation explores ambiguity and character from a diachronic point of view. If the 20th century medievalist Eugene Vinaver is correct, post-classical European literature underwent a huge shift in the 12th century: only after the birth of courtly romance was the interpretation of characters expected, both of texts and their readers. The second part of the dissertation will test this hypothesis in relation to ambiguity. Are there ambiguous characters in the same way prior to the 12th century as after it? If not, how does this innovation unravel into modernity? Could we say, against the disparagement of the medieval period in favour of the modern, that it is actually in the 12th century that ambiguous characters in the modern sense were first made possible?