Courses

"Chaucer and The Invention of Middle English Literature, 1330-1400," "Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm," "Epic and Romance: Arthurian Literature"; “British Literature From Beowulf to Milton ”

Research Interests

The cultural history of revolutionary moments; the history of the image and iconoclasm; the history of reading (especially sixteenth century Bible); idleness.

Books in Progress

Cultural Reformations: from Lollardy to the English Civil War, edited by Brian Cummings and James Simpson,
Twenty-First Century Approaches, 2 (Oxford University Press)

The Iniquity of the Fathers: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press)

Previous Books

Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (forthcoming, Harvard University Press,
2007)

Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, second, revised edition (forthcoming, Exeter University Press, 2007)

The Norton Anthology of English Literature, General Editors Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams; “The Middle
Ages”, ed. Alfred David and James Simpson ( New York : W. W. Norton, 2006), 1-484

John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)

Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547, being volume 2 of The Oxford English Literary History (Oxford
University Press, 2002)

Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette
Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille 's “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower's “Confessio amantis,”
Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1 (Harlow, Essex:
Longman, 1990)

Parisian Libraries, for The Index of Middle English Prose, General Editor A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 1989)

Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann
and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986)

Selected Articles, 1994-2007

“Bonjour Paresse: Literary Waste and Recycling in Book 4 of Gower’s Confessio amantis,” The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Publications of the British Academy, 151 (2007), 257-84

“Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies,” for Reading the Medieval in Early Modern
England,edited by David Matthews and Gordon McMullan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17-30

“Confessing Literature,” English Language Notes 44 (2006): 121-26

““For al my body…weieth nat an unce”: Empty Poets and Rhetorical Weight in Lydgate's Churl and the Bird,” for
John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame,
IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).

“Chaucer as a European Writer,” in The Yale Companion to Chaucer, ed. Seth Lerer (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2005), 55-86

“An Appendix of Literary Terms,” in Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8, Co-Editor Alfred David, General
Editor Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton: New York ), 19 pages

“Consuming Ethics: Caxton's History of Reynard the Fox,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts
in Honour of John Scattergood, edited by Alan Fletcher and Anne-Marie D'Arcy (Dublin: Four Courts Press,
2005), pp. 321-36

“Subjects of Triumph and Literary History: Dido and Petrarch in Petrarch's Trionfi and Africa,” Journal of Medieval
and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005): 489-508. Translated as “Soggetti di trionfo e storia letteraria: Didone e
Petrarca nell' Africa e nei Trionfi di Petrarca,” in Petrarca e i canoni del sapere: la dinamica della esemplarità,
edited by Valeria Finucci (Bulzoni, 2006, forthcoming)

“Saving Satire after Arundel: John Audelay's Marcol and Solomon ,”in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale ,
Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, edited by Ann Hutchison and Helen Barr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 387-404

“Not the Last Word,” being a reply to review articles for a number of JMEMS wholly dedicated to consideration of
Reform and Cultural Revolution, JMEMS , 35 (2005), 111-19.

“Pecock and Fortescue,” for A Companion to Middle English Prose , edited by A. S. G. Edwards (Woodbridge:
Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 271-88

“Martyrdom in the Literal Sense: Surrey's Psalm Paraphrases,” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (South
Korea), 12 (2004), 133-165

“Humanism,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1. William Chester Jordan, Editor in Chief (New York:
Charles Scribner's Sons, 2004), pp. 279-82

“Chaucer's Presence and Absence, 1400-1550,” A Chaucer Companion, edited by Jill Mann and Piero Boitani, second
edition (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 251-69

“Faith and Hermeneutics: Pragmatism versus Pragmatism,” for a special volume of the Journal of Medieval and
Early Modern Studies, 33 (2003), 215-39

“The Rule of Medieval Imagination,” in Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England , edited by Jeremy
Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 4-24

“The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman ,” in William Langland's Piers Plowman: A Book of
Essays , edited by Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (New York : Routledge, 2001), pp. 145-165

“Grace Abounding: Evangelical Centralisation and the End of Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies, 14
(2000), 1-25

“Bulldozing the Middle Ages: the Case of “John Lydgate”,” New Medieval Literatures, 4 (2000), 213-42

“Medieval Literature, Class 1,” in The Virtual Classroom, http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/vclass/virtclas.htm

“Contemporary English Writers,” in A Companion to Chaucer, edited by Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000),
pp. 114-32

“The Sacrifice of Lady Rochford: Henry Parker's Translation of De claris mulieribus,” in “Triumphs of English”:
Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court . New Essays in Interpretation, edited by Marie Axton
and James P. Carley (London : British Library Publications, 2000), pp. 153-69

“Violence, Narrative and Proper Name: Sir Degaré, “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney,” and the Anglo-Norman Folie
Tristan Oxford,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter (Harlow:
Longman, 2000), 122-41

“Breaking the Vacuum: Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 29
(1999), 325-55

“Ethics and Interpretation: Reading Wills in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 20
(1998), 73-100

“Hoccleve,” “Usk” and “Beast Fable” entries for Medieval England: An Encyclopaedia, General Editor, Paul E.
Szarmach (New York: Garland, 1998), 111-12.

“The Other Book of Troy : Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae in Fourteenth and Fifteenth-Century
England,” Speculum, 73 (1998), 397-423

“Ageism: Leland, Bale and the Laborious Start of English Literary History, 1350-1550,” New Medieval Literatures, 1
(1997), 213-35

““Dysemol daies and Fatal houres”: Lydgate's Destruction of Thebes and Chaucer's Knight's Tale,” in The Long
Fifteenth Century: Essays in Honour of Douglas Gray , edited by Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 15-33

“Desire and the Scriptural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages,
edited by Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 215-43

“Nobody's Man: Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes,” in London and Europe , edited by Julia Boffey and Pamela
King (London: Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 1995), pp. 150-80

Forthcoming Articles and Presentations

“Vernacular Literary Consciousness, c. 1100 – c. 1500: French, German and English Evidence,” with Kevin Brownlee,
Tony Hunt, Ian Johnson, Alastair Minnis, and Nigel F. Palmer, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism,
volume 2, The Middle Ages, edited by Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (Arabic edition, forthcoming)

“Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies,” for Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England,
edited by David Matthews and Gordon Mullan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

“John Lydgate,” for The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Literature, edited by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge
University Press, forthcoming)

“The Economy of Involucrum: Idleness in Reason and Sensuality”

“Visionary Writing in England, 1530- 1550,” for The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Mysticism, edited by
Vincent Gillespie and Samuel Fanous (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)

Last Updated: April 4, 2008