Cathryn Meyer, a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin and this year's Helen Ann Mins Robbins Fellow, will present a lecture on "Confessional Poetics of the Body in Late Medieval Literature," at 3 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in the Robbins Library, 416 Rush Rhees Library, on the University of Rochester's River Campus. A reception will follow the talk.
Focusing on two texts, Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Meyer explores how the confessional or penitential mode informed the context and the narrative shape of medieval works through the representation of bodies.
The Helen Ann Mins Robbins Fellowship was established to support research at the Rossell Hope Robbins Library for a woman working on a dissertation in medieval studies. Past fellows have explored medieval clothing, Jews in medieval England, the Arthurian legend, and courtesy books and manners.