Dr Mary Boyle
BA (KCL) MSt DPhil (Oxon)
Postgraduate Admissions Tutor
Mary holds a DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages (jointly supervised in German and English) and an MSt in Medieval Studies from Merton College, Oxford, and a BA in German with English from King’s College London. Her research focuses on comparative medieval English and German literature. She is currently writing a book on Victorian Anglo-German medievalism and co-editing an essay collection on pilgrimage texts.
Mary is also the Outreach Coordinator for German in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She was previously a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Junior Research Fellow at Linacre College, Oxford and an Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at Maynooth University.
Mary offers supervisions in medieval English and also teaches modern German translation.
medieval pilgrimage writing; medieval religious writing; comparative literature; medieval English literature; medieval German literature; nineteenth-century medievalism
Books:
- Anglo-German Medievalism in the Nineteenth Century (under contract with Manchester University Press)
- Pilgrimage Texts, 350-1550 (ed.) (under contract with Brill), with Philip Booth and Rodney Aist
- Epic! Homer and the Nibelungenlied in Translation (ed.) (Treasures of the Taylorian Series 3: Cultural Memory 7, 2024), with Philip Flacke, Timothy Powell, and Henrike Lähnemann (link).
- International Medievalisms (ed.) (DS Brewer, 2023) (link).
- Violent Victorian Medievalism (Treasures of the Taylorian Series Three: Cultural Memory 4, 2022) (link).
- Writing the Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages (DS Brewer, 2021) (link).
Book Chapters:
- 'The King and the Devil's Wife: Early Anglophone Versions of the Nibelungenlied', in Da brachte man die Märe in andrer Könige Land’. Europäische Überlieferung und Strahlkraft des 'Nibelungenliedes', ed. John Butcher (Mimesis, 2025) (link).
- 'The Jerusalem Pilgrimage in English', in The Oxford Handbook of Middle English Prose, ed. Sebastian Sobecki and Emily Steiner (OUP, forthcoming c. 2026).
- 'Emma Letherbrow’s Gudrun: Kudrun for ‘modern’ Victorians' in International Medievalisms, ed. Mary Boyle (D.S. Brewer, 2023).
- ‘Imaginatio, Anachronismus und Heilsgeschichte’ (with Annette Volfing) in Geschichte Erzählen, ed. Sarah Bowden, Manfred Eikelmann, Stephen Mossman, and Michael Stolz (Narr, 2020).
Journal Articles:
- Medievalist Forgery? Editions, Adaptations, and Translations of 'Kudrun' in the Nineteenth Century (postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2024).
- 'Hardly gear for woman to meddle with': Kriemhild’s Violence in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Versions of the 'Nibelungenlied' (Translation and Literature, 30.2 (2021), 170-197).
- To Gaze or Not to Gaze: The Nineteenth-century 'Der arme Heinrich' from Volksbuch to Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s 'Miracle-Rhyme' (Modern Language Review, 114.2 (2019), 181-211).
- Merton College, MS. 315: An Introduction (Oxford German Studies, 46.2 (2017), 213–16).
- Converting Corpses: The Religious Other in the Munich 'Oswald' and 'St Erkenwald' (Oxford German Studies, 44.2 (2015), 113–35).
- William Wey’s Itinerary to the Holy Land: Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 565 (c. 1470) (Bodleian Library Record, 28.1 (2015), 22–36).
Popular Articles and Free-to-Access Publications:
- Teeth, Bones and Books (Westminster Abbey Review, 2024-25).
- Making a heaven of hell (The Tablet, 18 May 2024).
- Recording of Writing the Jerusalem Pilgrimage, a talk given at the University of Portland's Garaventa Center (2 February 2022).
- Bad mothers: women in children’s literature (The Tablet, 1 January 2022).
- Blood, Stones and Holy Bones (History Today, Volume 71, 6 June 2021).
- In the proxy footsteps of the past (The Tablet, 8 April 2021).
- Writing the Jerusalem Pilgrimage in the Late Middle Ages (Medieval Herald, 45, June 2021).
German Section (Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics)
