Elizabeth Bryan researches medieval Brut Chronicle narratives and their evolving interpretations, medieval and early modern palaeography and codicology, theories of authorship and textual production in manuscript cultures, and Early Middle English vernacularity. She has published Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho Laȝamon (Michigan, 1999) and articles on Laȝamon and on historical reception of the Middle English Prose Brut.

Bryan's research includes medieval literatures in Old and Middle English and paleography. She has a special interest in chronicles of Britain and their narrative revisions from 1130 to 1600. She is also interested in medieval representations of women and history of the book.

2009
Faculty Fellowship, Cogut Center for the Humanities, Brown University (spring semester 2009)

Small grants for research travel:

1994
American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Grant for Travel to Conferences Overseas; International Medieval Congress, Leeds, England

1991
National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Travel to Collections Grant (FE-26794-92); project "Laȝamon's Brut and Monastic Histories: Manuscript Comparisons" at the British Library

1985-86
Penn-in-London Fellowship for one year's dissertation research in the U.K.

1982
NEH Fellowship, Harvard University Seminar in Old and Middle English Palaeography

Brown University internal grants:
2009
Brown University OVPR Departmental Research Grant, for travel to archives in Hamburg, Brussels, and England in June 2009

2008
Brown University OVPR Departmental Research Grant, for purchasing digital images of medieval manuscripts and (b) travel to archives in England in June - July 2008

2007
Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Grant, Brown University, "Vernacular Text Production in Medieval England and Spain" ($5,670)

2007
Brown University OVPR Departmental Research Grant,travel to archives in Scotland and France

2006
Departmental Research Funds Grant for purchase of slide reproductions, microfilms of manuscripts

2005
Departmental Research Funds Grant for travel to archives in Dublin, Ireland, and London, England, and to conferences in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Reading, England

2004
Departmental Research Funds Grant for travel to archives in Princeton; Philadelphia; Washington, D.C.; Charlottesville; Chapel Hill

2003-04
Francis Wayland Collegium for Liberal Learning, Faculty Study Group Award for "Perspectives on the Medieval Text Lawman's Brut"

2003
Departmental Research Funds Grant for travel to British Library, London, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for archival research, and to the International Medieval Congress at Leeds, England

2000
Salomon Faculty Research Grant for six months travel and medieval manuscript research in England ($10,000)

1993-94
Walter Cochrane Bronson Fellowship, Brown University Department of English, for one semester research leave

"Astronomy Translated: Caput Draconis and the Pendragon Star in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon," Arthuriana. Special Issue on Laȝamon's Brut, ed. Kenneth Tiller. 26 (2016), 141-163.

 

"Ursula in the British History Tradition" in The Cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Ed. Jane Cartwright. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016, pp. 119-142.

 

"Matthew Parker and the Middle English Prose Brut" in The Prose Brut and Other Late Medieval Chronicles: Books Have Their Histories: Essays in Honour of Lister M. Matheson. Eds. Jaclyn Rajsic, Erik Kooper, and Dominique Hoche. York: York Medieval Press, 2016, pp. 165-180.

 

"Deciphering the Brut: Lambeth Palace MS 6 and the Perils of Transmission," Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures. Special Issue: "Situating the Middle English Prose Brut," ed. Michelle R. Warren, 3.2 (2014), Johns Hopkins University Press, 257-283.

 

"Picturing Arthur in English History: Text and Image in the Middle English Prose Brut," Arthuriana, 23.4 (2013), 38-71.

 

“Laȝamon’s Brut and the Vernacular Text: Widening the Context,” in Reading Laȝamon’s Brut: Approaches and Explorations.  Ed. Rosamund Allen, Jane Roberts and Carole Weinberg.  DQR Studies in Literature Series 52. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2013, pp. 661-689.

"Rauner Codex MS 003183: The Beeleigh Abbey Brut at Dartmouth College," Journal of the Early Book Society, 12 (2009), 207-243

"Amazons and Ursulines," in Mindful Spirits in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth Kirk, ed. Bonnie Wheeler. New York: Palgrave, 2006, pp. 32-48

"Dialoguing Hands in MS Hatton 50: Reformation Readers of the Middle English Prose Brut," in Readers and Writers of the Prose Brut, ed. William Marx and Raluca Radulescu. Trivium 36 (Lampeter: University of Wales, 2006), 131-188

"The Afterlife of Armoriche," in La3amon: Contexts, Language, and Interpretation, ed. Rosamund Allen, Lucy Perry, and Jane Roberts. Kings College London Medieval Studies Series. London: Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 2002, pp. 117-155

Arthuriana, "Theoretical Approaches to Lawman's Brut." Special Issue guest-edited by Elizabeth J. Bryan. Arthuriana ,10:2 (Summer 2000)

"Introduction" to Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur. The Modern Library Series. New York: Random House, 1999, pp. vii-xii

Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho La3amon. Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism Series. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999

"Sir Frederic Madden's Annotations on La3amon's Brut," in Orality and Literacy in Early Middle English, ed. Herbert Pilch. ScriptOralia series. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1996, pp. 21-69

"La3amon's Four Helens: Female Figurations of Nation in the Brut," Leeds Studies in English, New Series XXVI, 1995, 63-78

Walter Cochrane Bronson Fellowship 1993-94

Modern Language Association
Medieval Academy of America
Hagiography Society
International Arthurian Society
International Laȝamon's Brut Society
Early Book Society
New Chaucer Society

Courses from introductory to graduate level on Middle English literatures, including Chaucer, and courses on study of medieval manuscripts, or palaeography and codicology. Recent topics in literature courses have included medieval journey narratives, women and the book in the Middle Ages, the Medieval King Arthur, Brut chronicles before Holinshed.