Linne Mooney

Profile

Biography

Linne Mooney is our Professor of Medieval English Palaeography, and active in both the Department of English and Related Literature and the Centre for Medieval Studies, based at King's Manor.

She is interested in the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) and other writers of his era, and she teaches late medieval English literature at both undergraduate and MA levels.  Because she studies the original hand-written copies of these writings, she often bring elements of the historical and cultural context of Middle English literature into her teaching.

Her research focuses on the dissemination of late medieval English literature in manuscript and early print. Earlier in her career she published articles about Middle English texts and manuscripts, editions of medieval texts, collections of essays, reference works, and studies of computer applications to manuscript studies and of medieval science; but her current research centres on late medieval English scribes, their identities, the places and conditions of their work, and their patrons. At MA level, she teaches palaeography (learning to read and date medieval handwriting) and textual criticism (editing medieval texts from their original sources) as well as codicology (the study of medieval books as artefacts).  She is happy to supervise MA dissertations that comprise editions or that study any facet of Middle English literature.

Her focus on the scribes of Middle English literature came to the fore when in 2004 she discovered the identity of the scribe, Adam Pinkhurst, who worked for Chaucer. In 2007-11, she was PI for a major AHRC research grant together with Simon Horobin (CI, Oxford) to discover the identity of other scribes who made the first copies of Middle English literature in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The results of this research on late medieval scribes is available on the website www.medievalscribes.com, launched in 2011, and in the book (2013), Scribes and the City: London Guildhall Clerks and the Dissemination of Middle English Literature, co-authored with Estelle Stubbs who was the RA on that project. Another major project recently brought near to completion is the web-based searchable Digital Index of Middle English Verse, prepared with Daniel Mosser of Virginia Tech and Elizabeth Solopova of Oxford, and launched in July 2013 on www.DIMEV.net.  She is a member of the Medieval Manuscripts Research Consortium, a cooperative of UK specialists in late medieval textual culture who in 2011-13  were funded by a grant from JISC to create a website of medieval manuscript resources, available at www.manuscriptsonline.org. She is one of three officers of the Early Book Society and associate editor of The Journal of the Early Book Society.

Research

Overview

Linne Mooney's research interests include editing of Middle English texts, manuscript studies, studies of authorship and distribution of Middle English texts, and new historical studies of Middle English authors and texts.

Prospective students may contact her by email at linne.mooney@york.ac.uk to discuss their ideas for postgraduate research projects.

External activities

Memberships

• Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
• Member, Medieval Academy of America, New Chaucer Society, EETS, AMARC, John Gower Society, William Langland Society.
• One of collaborative team of researchers in the Medieval Manuscripts Research Consortium, sharing information on funded projects relating to medieval manuscript studies and hosting workshops and creating training resources for postgraduate research in original medieval sources, together with Jeremy Smith and Alison Wiggin at University of Glasgow, John Thompson at Queen's University Belfast, Wendy Scase at the University of Birmingham, Simon Horobin at Oxford University, Ian Johnson at University of St Andrews, and Orietta DaRold at University of Leicester.

Editorial duties

• Associate editor of The Journal of the Early Book Society, and one of three officers of the Early Book Society.
• Editorial Board of Middle English Texts.