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Nicola Royan

Lecturer: Late Medieval & Early Renaissance Literature, Faculty of Arts

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Biography

I completed my MA in Humanity and Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow in 1992. I was then awarded a Snell Exhibition and Scottish Office Education Department funding to undertake a D.Phil. at Balliol College, Oxford. This I completed in 1996. Before being appointed to my current post at Nottingham in 2001, I taught at the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow.

I have been Editorial Secretary for the Scottish Text Society since 2000; I am also currently a Trustee of the Scottish Medievalists.

Expertise Summary

MA (Hons) (Glasgow) DPhil (Oxford) Areas of expertise - late medieval and early modern literatures, English and Scottish; representations of kingship and national identity; humanism in Scotland; devotional lyric and Arthurian romance. UG Modules taught

I teach on the core modules in medieval studies and modern literature, and I offer specialist modules in Arthurian literature and literature written around the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

PG modules taught

I offer specialist modules in Middle English and Older Scots writing, including Arthurian material. I also contribute to modules on sixteenth and seventeenth century writing at MA level.

Areas of Research Supervision My particular expertise is in Scottish literature from 1375-1625, written in Scots, English and Latin. I have an interest on medieval and early modern historiography which extends beyond Scotland, especially its interface with more obviously 'literary' genres.

Teaching Summary

i teach a range of literature written between about 1350 and 1625, approximately Chaucer to Spenser. My background is Scottish literature and Latin, and, as in my research, I'm always looking for… read more

Research Summary

Being a Scot abroad, I am naturally concerned with issues of Scottish identity and self-representation; however, my academic interest in this topic goes back to my degree from Glasgow, in Scottish… read more

Recent Publications

  • NICOLA ROYAN, ed., 2013. Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Literature, 1400-1600 Edinburgh University Press. (In Press.)
  • NICOLA ROYAN, 2012. 'The Scottish Identity of Gavin Douglas'. In: MARK P. BRUCE and KATHERINE H. TERRELL, eds., The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity, 1300-1600 Palgrave. (In Press.)
  • NICOLA ROYAN, 2011. Everyday Life in the Histories of Scotland from Walter Bower to George Buchanan. In: COWAN, EDWARD J and HENDERSON LIZANNE, eds., A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600 Edinburgh University Press. 185-95
  • ROYAN, N and MCKINLEY, K, eds., 2010. The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and Literary Culture in the Reign of James VI, a Festschrift for Roderick J. Lyall Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

i teach a range of literature written between about 1350 and 1625, approximately Chaucer to Spenser. My background is Scottish literature and Latin, and, as in my research, I'm always looking for space to discuss issues around the effects of humanism, the interplay between historiography and fictive literatures, and issues of political comment in texts. I teach on both Year 1 and Year 2 core and optional modules, across the 1500-divide, and I am keen to draw links between them. I have two Year 3 modules this year, one on Arthurian Literature, and the other, Love in a Cold Climate, is concerned with sixteenth-century Scottish lyric.

I also teach Masters students. I currently convene the MA in Medieval Literature, and welcome all kinds of students on to late medieval modules. Our medieval provision next year will include a module on book history which draws on material held by the university's Special Collections; we have also just developed a module on editing, which will be open across the School. I also teach a period module, Tudor an Stuart Identities.I

Current Research

Being a Scot abroad, I am naturally concerned with issues of Scottish identity and self-representation; however, my academic interest in this topic goes back to my degree from Glasgow, in Scottish Literature and Latin. I have focused particularly on its place within historiography - historical and pseudo-historical accounts - from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the subject of my thesis was Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia, more famous now for being one of Shakespeare's sources for Macbeth. My professional interest in the literature of the Scottish kingdom has continued since my appointment at Nottingham in 2001; this now includes historiography, romances and alliterative poetry, sixteenth-century lyrics and religious writing. I am about to return to issues of humanism and its dissemination in Scotland in the early sixteenth century. I will be working largely on Gavin Douglas, but also on Boece again and his translator, John Bellenden.

As well as conducting individual research on these topics, I also act as Editorial Secretary for the Scottish Text Society, a learned society that publishes editions of works written in Scotland prior to 1750.

Future Research

I have been commissioned to edit the Edinburgh Companion to Early Scottish Literature, to be published by EUP in 2012: this will attempt to offer a comprehensive guide to literature in Scots, Gaelic and Latin from 1420 to 1650, for undergraduate and beginning post graduate students.

As I said above, I am hoping to develop work on Scottish humanism, with particular reference to Gavin Douglas.

  • NICOLA ROYAN, ed., 2013. Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Literature, 1400-1600 Edinburgh University Press. (In Press.)
  • NICOLA ROYAN, 2012. 'The Scottish Identity of Gavin Douglas'. In: MARK P. BRUCE and KATHERINE H. TERRELL, eds., The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity, 1300-1600 Palgrave. (In Press.)
  • NICOLA ROYAN, 2011. Everyday Life in the Histories of Scotland from Walter Bower to George Buchanan. In: COWAN, EDWARD J and HENDERSON LIZANNE, eds., A History of Everyday Life in Medieval Scotland, 1000-1600 Edinburgh University Press. 185-95
  • ROYAN, N and MCKINLEY, K, eds., 2010. The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and Literary Culture in the Reign of James VI, a Festschrift for Roderick J. Lyall Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • ROYAN, N, 2010. 'The alliterative Awntyrs stanza in Older Scots verse'. In: BURROW, J. and DUGGAN. H., eds., Medieval Alliterative Poetry: Essays in Honour of Thorlac Turville-Petre Dublin: Four Courts Press. 185-94
  • ROYAN, NICOLA, 2010. Rebellion Under God: Judith in the Court of James VI. In: KEVIN J. MCGINLEY and N.ROYAN, eds., The Apparelling of Truth: Literature and Literary Culture in the Reign of James VI: A Festschrift for Roderick J. Lyall Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 94-104
  • ROYAN, NICOLA, 2009. 'A Question of Truth: Barbour's Bruce, Hary's Wallace and Richard Coer de Lion International Review of Scottish Studies. 34, 75-105
  • ROYAN, N, ed., 2007. Langage Cleir Illumynate: Scottish Poetry from Barbour to Drummond, 1375-1630 Rodopi.
  • ROYAN, N.R. and BROUN, D.E., 2006. Versions of Scottish Nationhood from c. 850-1707. In: CLANCY, T., PITTOCK, M., BROWN, I. and MANNING, S., eds., The Edinburgh history of Scottish literature 1: From Columba to the Union (until 1707). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 168-183
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2006. 'Mark your Meroure be Me': Richard Holland's Buke of the Howlat. In: BAWCUTT, P and WILLIAMS, J.H., eds., A Companion to medieval Scottish poetry Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer. 49-62
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2006. Medieval Literature. In: HARRIS, B and MACDONALD, A.R., eds., The Scottish Nation: Origins to c. 1500 1. Dundee: Dundee University Press. 201-17
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2005. The fine art of faint praise in older Scots historiography. In: PURDIE, R. and ROYAN, N., eds., The Scots and medieval Arthurian legend Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. 43-54
  • ROYAN, N.R. and PURDIE, R., eds., 2005. The Scots and the Medieval Arthurian Legend Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2005. Scottish literature. In: JOHNSON, D. AND TREHARNE, E., ed., Readings in medieval texts: interpreting Old and Middle English literature Oxford: Oxford University Press. 354-69
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2002. National Martyrdom in Northern Humanist Historiography Forum for Modern Language Studies. VOL 38(PART 4), 462-475
  • ROYAN, N.R. AND JOHNSON, I., ed., 2002. Scottish Texts, European Contexts: special issue of Forum for Modern Language Studies, 34(4) Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2002. "Na les vailyeant than ony uthir princis of Britane": representations of Arthur in Scotland 1480-1540 Scottish Studies Review. 3(1), 9-20
  • ROYAN, N.R. and VAN HEIJNSBERGEN, T., eds., 2002. Literature, Letters and the Canonical: Studies in the Writings of Early Modern Scotland East Linton: Tuckwell Press.
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2001. Hector Boece and the question of Veremund Innes Review. 52(1), 42-62
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2000. The Uses of Speech in Hector Boece's Scotorum Historia. In: HOUWEN, L.A.J.R and MACDONALD, A.A. AND MAPSTONE, S.L., eds., A Palace in the Wild: Essays on Vernacular Culture and Humanism in Late-Medieval and Renaissance Scotland Leuven: Peeters. 75-93
  • ROYAN, N.R., 2000. Writing the Nation. In: HATTAWAY, M., ed., A Companion to English Renaissance Literature and Culture Oxford: Blackwell. 699-708

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