John D. Niles (born 1945) is an American scholar of medieval English literature best known for his work on ''
Beowulf
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The ...
'' and the theory of
oral literature
Oral literature, orature or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used vary ...
.
Career
A graduate of the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, where he received his higher degrees (B.A. in English, 1967; PhD in Comparative Literature, 1972), Niles taught for an initial four years as Assistant Professor of English at
Brandeis University
, mottoeng = "Truth even unto its innermost parts"
, established =
, type = Private research university
, accreditation = NECHE
, president = Ronald D. Liebowitz
, pro ...
. He then was invited to join the faculty of the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where he remained for twenty-six years until taking early retirement. In 2001 he joined the faculty of the
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...
, where he taught for ten years in the Department of English, was named the Frederic G. Cassidy Professor of Humanities, and was a Senior Fellow at the UW Institute for the Humanities. After his retirement from UW-Madison in 2011 he has remained active in research as Professor Emeritus at both UC Berkeley and UW-Madison.
Niles is the author of eight books on Old English literature and related topics. He has edited or co-edited another nine books, in addition to upwards of sixty scholarly articles and other publications. During the 1980s he conducted extensive fieldwork into singing and storytelling traditions in
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...
, particularly among
Scottish Gypsy and Traveller Groups
Scottish Travellers, or the people in Scotland loosely termed Romani persons or travellers, consist of a number of diverse, unrelated communities that speak a variety of different languages and dialects that pertain to distinct customs, historie ...
, including the noted storyteller
Duncan Williamson
Duncan James Williamson (11 April 1928, Loch Fyneside, near Furnace, Argyll - 8 November 2007) was a Scottish storyteller and singer, and a member of the Scottish Traveller community. The Scottish poet and scholar Hamish Henderson once refe ...
. This research resulted in his 1997 book ''Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature''. In 2005 he taught a seminar at
the Newberry Library, Chicago
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
on the early history of Old English studies. This became the kernel of his 2015 book ''The Idea of Anglo-Saxon England 1066-1901'', a sustained account of the history of Anglo-Saxon studies. His researches into the archaeology and prehistory of early Northwest Europe led to the joint publication ''Beowulf and Lejre'' (2007). This features a mine of information about the prehistoric Danish site (at the present-day hamlet of
Lejre
Lejre is a railway town, with a population of 3,127 (1 January 2022),eamus Heaneys translation of the poem (W.W. Norton, 2007). .
*''Klaeber’s Beowulf'', 4th edition (University of Toronto Press, 2008) - with R.D. Fulk and Robert E. Bjork. .
*''The Genesis of Books: Studies in the Scribal Culture of Medieval England in Honour of A.N. Doane'' (Brepols, 2011) - with Matthew T. Hussey. .
*''Anglo-Saxon England and the Visual Imagination'' (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2016) - with Stacy S. Klein and Jonathan Wilcox. .
University of Wisconsin–Madison
A university () is an educational institution, institution of higher education, higher (or Tertiary education, tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. Universities ty ...
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...