Lucian Shepherd (UK)

During my time as an undergraduate in French and German at Oxford, I was fortunate enough to discover a passion for medieval studies. This very passion has led me to the MSt in Modern Languages where I can continue my research into all things medieval across the whole period and geographic span of France and the Holy Roman Empire. From the gendered body in mæren to the liminality of the human court and nature in Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, my research interests are broad but share the belief that the medieval understanding of the world is just as complex as our own today.

My central project is interested in skin as a metaphor in Salman und Morolf, a German narrative attested in the late Middle Ages. The cutting, puncturing and manipulation of skin is not only a material reality of the codex but also a textual motif which presents problems of identity formation and perception with skin used as a human disguise. Just as there are layers to skin and layers between the exterior and interior self, so too is the narrative layered with satire and farce. Hence, my dissertation hopes to highlight the layered complexity of this text which scholarship has often perceived as simply one-dimensional.

Beyond this, I am active in the digital humanities (DH) community, exploring how computational tools can support our research as well as our engagement with wider audiences. My experiences have focused largely on digital editions, but I look forward to further developing my skills outside of TEI/XML. Alongside this is a firm interest in materiality (codicology, palaeography, image-text relation) as the most direct connection with our medieval heritage in libraries and archives. I further have an interest in Old Yiddish whose literature attests to cross-cultural connections like those which have shaped our own contemporary culture.