Rita Copeland

Kahn Endowed Term Professor
Classical Studies, English, and Comparative Literature
University of Pennsylvania

Contact Information:
Classical Studies
201 Claudia Cohen Hall
Philadelphia, PA 19104
PHONE: 215-898-7425
EMAIL: rcopelan@sas.upenn.edu

I work across a number of fields and periods, including: medieval literature (English, Latin, French); literary theory from ancient to modern; the history of rhetoric; the reception of classical traditions in medieval and early modern Europe; intellectuals, learning, and literacy in medieval Europe. Usually my teaching combines my interests in antiquity and the Middle Ages--or how the Middle Ages understood antiquity.  Among my current projects are the Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature vol. 1, The Middle Ages, and essays on medieval Latin annotation and glossing and on Aristotle's Rhetoric in medieval England.  I am also interested in representations of the intellectual in pre-modern Europe, from late antique rhetorical culture to late medieval university cultures and heretical communities.  My recent books are: Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric:  Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300-1475, co-authored with Ineke Sluiter; and The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, co-edited with Peter Struck.  I am a co-founder of the annual New Medieval Literatures (see information at Brepols), and co-editor, with Jill Ross, of Toronto Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Rhetoric, a new book series from Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.  In fall, 2010, I will be a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, working in the research group Encountering Scripture. 

Recent graduate courses that I have taught include: The Classics and Middle English Literature; Medieval Education; The Sophists:  Ancient Traditions and Post-Classical Receptions (co-taught with Ralph Rosen); Introduction to Literary Theory (Comparative Literature); Medieval Allegory; Premodern Rhetorics; Piers Plowman; Chaucer's Classicism.  Undergraduate courses that I teach include: History of Literary Theory (Ancient to Modern); Ancient and Medieval Epic; The Romance of Pagan Antiquity.

Books:

Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge, 1991/1995.

Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1996.

Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning. Cambridge, 2001.

Co-authored with Ineke Sluiter, Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric:  Language Arts and Literary Theory AD 300-1475.  Oxford, 2009

Co-edited with Peter Struck, The Cambridge Companion to Allegory.  Cambridge, 2010

Co-edited with Christopher Cannon and Nicolette Zeeman, Medieval Grammar and the Literary Arts, special issue of New Medieval Literatures (2009)

Medieval Background/Border, and Logo (modified Medieval Cat teaching Mice ex MS Ashmole 1525, fol. 39) courtesy of Eric Kondratieff and Forum Antiquum, 2002..