Contact:

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

Biographie:

•    Seit 10/2021 Wissenschaftlicher Angestellter und Doktorand im Graduiertenkolleg 1808: „Ambiguität – Produktion und Rezeption“ an der Universität Tübingen
•    01/2021 - 01/2022 Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft als Lektorat am Institut für Klassische Philologie und Komparatistik der Universität Leipzig
•    10/2017 - 09/2020 M.A. Anglistik an der Universität Leipzig
•    10/2017 - 07/2020 Wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft als Dozent für akademisches Schreiben an der Anglistik Institut der Universität Leipzig
•    10/2002 - 07/2005 B.A. Philosophie und Literatur an der Universität Warwick, VK

Forschungsschwerpunkte

• Geschichte der literarischen Formen vom Mittelalter zur Moderne
• Mittelalterliche Erzählung und Kultur
• Theorie der Figur
• Heroische Literatur
• Literatur, Mythos und Religion
• Literatur und LInguistik

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

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?