Professor, Literature (Early British, Medieval)
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What I Do at SSU
I teach a wide range of courses from first-year writing and upper division G. E., to key major courses such as Literary Analysis and Early British Survey, as well as senior-level courses and M. A. seminars. I specialize in the literature of the European Middle Ages, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) and late medieval British literature. Some recent senior-level and M. A. course titles have included: “King Arthur and England,” “Medieval Monsters,”“Sex, Sin, and Society in Chaucer,” and “Medieval Literature and the Boundaries of the Human.” I am glad to advise M. A. theses dealing with any aspect of medieval literature, especially Chaucer.
Brantley Bryant joined the SSU faculty in the fall of 2007 after completing his Ph. D. in English at Columbia University in New York. His research and teaching interests include later medieval literature, Geoffrey Chaucer and his contemporaries, interdisciplinary approaches to literature and history, women’s writing, the history of sexuality, intersections of medieval literature and popular culture, public outreach on behalf of literary studies, and recent developments in “posthuman” approaches to literature. His current long-term project is a book on representations of water in late medieval literature.
"Accounting for Affect in the Reeve's Tale," in Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion. Ed. Glenn D. Burger and Holly A. Crocker. Cambridge University Press, 2019. 118-137.
Founder, editorial collective, with Candace Barrington, Richard H. Godden, Daniel T. Kline, and Myra Seaman. The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. 2017.
"One Does Not Simply Laugh in Middle Earth: Sacrificing Humor in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings." Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 5.2 (2014): 184-198. Special Issue "Comic Medievalisms," ed. Louise d'Arcens.
"H. P. Lovecraft's 'Unnamable' Middle Ages," in Medieval Afterlives in Popular Culture. Ed. Gail Ashton and Daniel T. Kline. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog: Medieval Studies and New Media. With Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Robert W. Hanning, and Bonnie Wheeler. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
"Talking with the Taxman about Poetry: England's Economy in 'Against the King's Taxes' and Wynnere and Wastoure." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5 (2008): 219-248.
“‘By Extorcions I Lyve’: Chaucer’s Friar’s Tale and Corrupt Officials.” The Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 180-195.