Gillian Lesley "Jill" Mann, FBA (born 7 April 1943), is a scholar known for her work on medieval literature, especially on

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

and

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin used in Roman Catholic Western Europe during the Middle Ages. In this region it served as the primary written language, though local languages were also written to varying degrees. Latin functioned ...

Education and career

Mann was born in York, where her father was engaged in war work, but brought up in Sunderland, Co. Durham, where she was educated at the Bede Grammar School for Girls. In 1961 she won a place at

St Anne's College, Oxford St Anne's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 and gained full college status in 1959. Originally a women's college, it has admitted men since 1979. It has some 450 undergraduate and 200 ...

, and took her BA (1st Class Hons) in English Language and Literature in 1964. She began research work on the General Prologue to the

Canterbury Tales ''The Canterbury Tales'' ( enm, Tales of Caunterbury) is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's ''magnum opus' ...

in Oxford, but in 1967 she moved to Cambridge and eventually transferred to a Cambridge PhD, which she completed in 1971. She held a Research Fellowship at

Clare Hall, Cambridge Clare Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. Founded in 1966 by Clare College, Clare Hall is a college for advanced study, admitting only postgraduate students alongside postdoctoral researchers and fellows. It ...

, from 1968–1971; from 1971–1972 she taught medieval and some modern literature at the

University of Kent , motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...

at Canterbury. In 1972 she returned to Cambridge as an Official Fellow of

Girton College Girton College is one of the Colleges of the University of Cambridge, 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. The college was established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon as the first women's college in Cambridge. In 1 ...

, and in 1974 she was appointed to an Assistant Lectureship in the Faculty of English, upgraded to Lecturer in 1978. In 1988 she was elected

Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English (Cambridge) The chair in Medieval and Renaissance English is a professorship in English literature at Cambridge University. It was created in 1954 for C. S. Lewis, and is unusual among professorships in this field in uniting 'medieval' and 'renaissance' categ ...

, a post which she held until 1998. She was Chair of the Faculty of English from 1993 to 1995, and helped the Faculty prepare for its first ever HEFCE teaching quality assessment. In 1998 she resigned the Cambridge Chair and took up a post as Notre Dame Professor of English at the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main campu ...

, Indiana; on taking early retirement in 2004, she was made an Emeritus Professor of Notre Dame. She is resident in Cambridge, and is a Life Fellow of Girton College.

Publications

Mann's work has always had a strongly comparative character, bringing together texts in several medieval languages. Her dominant interests are the literature of fourteenth-century England, especially

Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for '' The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

, and medieval beast literature in Latin, French, and English. Her books include ''Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire'' (1973), ''Feminizing Chaucer'' (2002), and ''The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer'' (edited with Piero Boitani); she also edited the ''Canterbury Tales'' for Penguin Classics (2005). She produced an edition and translation of the Latin beast epic ''Ysengrimus'', with a lengthy account of the poem’s relation to its historical context in twelfth-century

Flanders Flanders (, ; Dutch: ''Vlaanderen'' ) is the Flemish-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, ...

; she is currently working on an edition and translation of the ''Speculum Stultorum'', another twelfth-century Latin beast epic, written by a monk of

Christ Church, Canterbury Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England. It forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Justin Welby, leader of the Ch ...

. She has published some 60 articles on medieval literature in English, Latin, French, and Italian; fifteen of them are collected in ''Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory'', edited with a lengthy Introduction by Mark David Rasmussen analysing their contribution to medieval literary studies. Excerpts from her published work are frequently included in Norton Critical Editions and similar anthologies.

Bibliography

* ''Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales'' (Cambridge, 1973) * ''The Cambridge Chaucer Companion'' (Cambridge, 1986); revised as ''The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer'', ed. Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2003) * ''Ysengrimus: Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary'' (Leiden, 1987) * ''Geoffrey Chaucer'' (Harvester-Wheatsheaf Feminist Readings series), (Hemel Hempstead, 1991); revised as ''Feminizing Chaucer'' (Cambridge, 2002) * ''The Canterbury Tales'', ed., Penguin Classics (London, 2005) * ''The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors and Readers'', ed. with Maura Nolan (Notre Dame, IN, 2006) * ''From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain'' (Oxford, 2009) * ''Ysengrimus'', ed. and trans., Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 26 (Cambridge, Mass., 2013) * ''Life in Words: Essays on Chaucer, the Gawain-Poet, and Malory'', with an Introduction by Mark David Rasmussen (Toronto, 2014) A full bibliography up to 2011 is published in Mann’s festschrift, ''Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature'', ed. Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan (Cambridge, 2011)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mann, Jill Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge 1943 births Fellows of the British Academy Living people University of Notre Dame faculty Professors of Medieval and Renaissance English (Cambridge) Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford