prof. dr. S.I. (Sebastian) Sobecki
Hoogleraar Engelse letterkunde en cultuurkunde van de Middeleeuwen
Research
Research units:
Research interests
My research concentrates on medieval English and early Tudor literature, especially Chaucer and Gower. I work with archives and manuscripts, and am interested in law, politics, travel, and Anglo-European contact. I have held a Visiting Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford (Hilary Term 2016), and I was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California (2015). I have also received substantial research funding, including a SSHRC Standard Research Grant (the Canadian equivalent of the NWO's Vidi grant) and grants from Québec's FQRSC and the Dutch NWO. In 2016, I was awarded the John Hurt Fisher Prize by the John Gower Society.
I am completing the first two volumes of a 14-volume edition of Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations for Oxford University Press (general editors: Dan Carey and Claire Jowitt). These two volumes will include 70 of the medieval texts printed by Hakluyt. With Anthony Bale I am co-editing Medieval English Travel: A Critical Anthology (for Oxford University Press, 2018). Furthermore, I am editing with Candace Barrington The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Law and Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and, with John Scattergood, a companion to Skelton (D.S. Brewer, 2018). I am working on my third monograph, Beyond Politics: English Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford University Press). I am the editor of The Travels of Sir John Peyton the Younger (1579–1635), for the Hakluyt Society, in two volumes, and I am preparing The Cambridge History of Medieval Travel Writing.
My recent work on Chaucer and Gower has appeared in Speculum in 2015 and 2017, and I have a forthcoming article on Piers Plowman in The Review of English Studies. I am also writing commissioned chapters on 'Pilgrimage and Travel' for Peter Brown's New Companion to Chaucer; on Hakluyt's medieval texts for The Oxford Hakluyt Handbook; on Chaucer's contemporary reception by Usk, Gower, and Hoccleve for Critical Survey. My current research concentrates on the earliest reception of Chaucer.
My latest monograph on John Fortescue, common law, English Humanism, and the Reformation, Unwritten Verities: The Making of England's Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463-1549, has been published by Notre Dame University Press in 2015.
I have written on my research for the British Library's European Studies Blog and for the Women's Literary Culture and the Medieval Canon Blog, on Margery Kempe.
Publications
Wards and Widows: Troilus and Criseyde and New Documents on Chaucer's Life
Sobecki, S. 2018 (Accepted/In press) In : ELH.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Hares, Rabbits, Pheasants: Piers Plowman and William Longewille, a Norfolk Rebel in 1381
Sobecki, S. 15-Dec-2017 In : Review of english studies.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
A Southwark Tale: Gower, the Poll Tax of 1381, and Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Sobecki, S. Jul-2017 In : Speculum-A journal of medieval studies. 92, 3, p. 630-660 30 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Ecce patet tensus: The Trentham Manuscript, In Praise of Peace, and John Gower's Autograph Hand
Sobecki, S. Oct-2015 In : Speculum-A journal of medieval studies. 90, 4, 40 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
“The writyng of this tretys”: Margery Kempe’s Son and the Authorship of Her Book
Sobecki, S. Nov-2015 In : Studies in the Age of Chaucer. 37Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Unwritten Verities: The Making of England's Vernacular Legal Culture, 1463-1549
Sobecki, S. Mar-2015 Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Research output: Book/Report › Book
Lydgate’s Kneeling Retraction: The Testament as a Literary Palinode
Sobecki, S. Jan-2015 In : Chaucer review. 49, 3, p. 265-293 28 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
John Peyton's A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Accession of King James I, 1598-1603
Sobecki, S. I. 2014 In : The English Historical Review. 129, 540, p. 1079-1097 19 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Bureaucratic Verse: William Lyndwood, the Privy Seal and the Form of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye
Sobecki, S. I. 2010 In : New Medieval Literatures. 12, p. 251-288 38 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
The Sea and Medieval English Literature
Sobecki, S. I. 2008 Cambridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer. 205 p. (Studies in medieval romance; vol. 5)Research output: Book/Report › Book
Educating Richard: Incest, Marriage, and (Political) Consent in Gower's 'Tale of Apollonius'
Sobecki, S. I. 2007 In : Anglia-Zeitschrift fur englische philologie. 125, 2, p. 205-216 12 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
Press / Media
Gazeta Wyborcza: Przełomowe dla historii literatury angielskiej odkrycie w Gdańsku
03/06/2015
1 item of media coverage
Press/Media: Research
Dziennik Bałtycki: Angielska mistyczka w Gdańsku
18/05/2015
1 item of media coverage
Press/Media: Research
Activities
London Chaucer Conference
Sobecki, S. (Keynote speaker)2017Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Pirate Fiction in the Middle Ages, c. 500 - c.1500 AD
Sobecki, S. (Keynote speaker)2017Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
Travel and Conflict in the Medieval and Early Modern Period
Sobecki, S. (Keynote speaker)2015Activity: Talk or presentation › Invited talk
The Hakluyt Society (External organisation)
Sobecki, S. (Member)2015 → …Activity: Scientific › Membership of network
Index of Middle English Prose (External organisation)
Sobecki, S. (Member)2016 → …Activity: Scientific › Membership of committee
Prizes
FQRSC Grant - Établissement de nouveau professeurs-chercheurs 2008-2011
Sebastian Sobecki (Recipient), 2008
Prize
Visiting Fellowship, All Souls College, Oxford
Sebastian Sobecki (Recipient), Jan-2016
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library
Sebastian Sobecki (Recipient), Jul-2015
Prize: Fellowship awarded competitively
ID: 372895