Dr Amy Louise Morgan


Lecturer in Medieval Literature
+44 (0)1483 689151
17 AD 02
Online Mondays 2:30-3:30 and Thursdays 2-4

About

Areas of specialism

Medieval Literature; Queer Theory; Gender and Sexuality; Space; Temporality; Monsters and the Supernatural

University roles and responsibilities

  • Admissions Tutor for Literature

    Affiliations and memberships

    Gender and Medieval Studies Steering Group
    Member

    Research

    Research interests

    Supervision

    Postgraduate research supervision

    Completed postgraduate research projects I have supervised

    Teaching

    Publications

    Amy Morgan (2018)‘To play bi an orchardside’: Orchards as Enclosures of Queer Space in Lanval and Sir Orfeo, In: Patricia Skinner, Theresa Tyers (eds.), The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain: Enclosure and Transformation, c.1200-1750pp. 91-101 Routledge

    In his archaeological study of elite landscapes in the medieval period, Oliver H. Creighton (2009, 47) states that “[g]ardens were, in a sense, transformative, mediating domestic spaces – carefully managed points of interface between the household and the natural world beyond.” It is the transformative, hybrid and liminal space of the enclosed garden that I will examine in this essay. In particular, I will argue that in Marie de France’s Anglo-Norman/Old French, twelfth-century lay Lanval and the anonymous fourteenth-century Middle English Breton lay Sir Orfeo, the transformative nature of the orchard marks the space as inherently queer and creates the potential for transgressive acts and Otherworldly encounters. In Lanval, the setting of the orchard allows Marie de France to invert common conventions of medieval literature and gender politics to present an alternative gender dynamic between knight and lady. It is also the physical space in which the protagonist Lanval is directly accused of sodomy. In Sir Orfeo, the “ympe-tre” (Sir Orfeo, 70. All Middle English references are from Bliss 1966, and modern English translations from Tolkien 1975, with line numbers) in the orchard functions as a limen to the Otherworld and thus the orchard is presented as a permeable space which is open to the supernatural fairies.

    Amy Morgan (2020)Marie de France, Lanval and Alienation at Court, In: Le Cygne: Journal of the International Marie de France Society International Marie de France Society
    Amy Morgan (2015)Fairies, Monsters and the Queer Otherworld: Otherness in Sir Orfeo, In: Natalie Goodison, Alexander J Wilson (eds.), On the Fringes: Outsiders and Otherness in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds. MEMSA Journal 1pp. 45-66 Medieval and Early Modern Student Association