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Ruth Evans

Saint Louis University, English, Faculty Member

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My major research interests are in the period 1300-1580, with particular focuses on memory, gender, and sexuality. I also have strong interests in translation, editing, the history of the book, and manuscript studies. My edited collection Sexuality in the Middle Ages (for Berg’s Cultural History of Sexuality series), was published in 2011. My co-edited collection (with Valerie Allen) Roadworks: Medieval Roads (Manchester University Press) was published this year (2016).
Phone: 1-314-977-3007
Address: Department of English
College of Arts and Sciences
Saint Louis University
Adorjan Hall 231
3800 Lindell Blvd
St. Louis, MO 63108-3414
USA
Tel: 1 (314) 977-3007
Fax: 314 977 1514

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Papers and Reviews by Ruth Evans

EVANS Memory's History Troilus and Criseyde.pdf

This essay seeks to explore the relationship between memory and history in Chaucer’s Troilus. In ... more This essay seeks to explore the relationship between memory and history in Chaucer’s Troilus. In order to clarify some important differences between the medieval and the postmodern, the essay begins with an analysis of a scene from Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000), drawing on the work of the French cultural historian Pierre Nora. If we are now (according to Nora, obsessed with memory, vernacular writers in the later Middle Ages were concerned to intervene in the medieval tradition whereby memory is kept alive through authoritative textual tradition. I argue that Chaucer’s poem participates in the rethinking of vernacularity in terms that do not simply reproduce Criseyde (the focus of the poem’s anxious memorialization) as a figure of loss and/or textual feminine indecidability.

Key words: memory, Chaucer, Troilus, Criseyde, authority, vernacularity, history.

The Book of Margery Kempe Blackwell Companion

Introduction Medieval Narratives: Living On EVANS & MONTERO

What we understand today by the term "narrative" is not universal or transparent. Nor is the cult... more What we understand today by the term "narrative" is not universal or transparent. Nor is the cultural work that narratives do. That work varies across dif fer ent cultures and at dif fer ent times. According to the OED, the two main current definitions of narrative are the "spoken or written account of connected events; a story," and the "practice or art of telling stories." The first definition highlights the emplotting aspect of narrative, namely that it does more than describe events because it makes connections between them, while the second points to the narrator's deployment of technique, expertise, and conventions within a defined social situation. Storytelling not only requires skill but also presupposes an audience. Medieval understandings of narrative share these broad modern definitions. But if we look at the more specialized meanings of the term, we see some differences in the range of meanings between now and the Middle Ages.

Introduction: What Is Textual Culture BRAY & EVANS

Our cyborg past : Medieval ar tificial memory as mindware upgrade

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natur... more The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natural-born cyborgs,' that is, they have always collaborated and merged with non-biological props and aids in order to find better environments for thinking. These 'mindware' upgrades (I borrow the term 'mindware' from Clark, 2001) extend beyond the fusions of the organic and technological that posthumanist theory imagines as our future. Moreover, these external aids do not remain external to our minds; they interact with them to effect profound changes in their internal architecture. Medieval artificial memory systems provide evidence for just this kind of cognitive interaction. But because medieval people conceived of their relationship to technology in fundamentally different ways, we need also to attend to larger epistemic frameworks when we analyze historically contingent forms of mindware upgrade. What cultural history adds to our understanding of embedded cognition is not only a recognition of our cyborg past but a historicized understanding of human reality. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2010) 1, 64–71.

EVANS An Afterword on the Prologue

“Trouble in the Archives”: Review of Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1996) ISBN 0-226-14336-8, Southern Review (Adelaide) 30 (1997): 226-31. ISSN 0038-4526.

Sir Orfeo and Bare Life

“Historicizing Postcolonial Criticism: Cultural Difference and the Vernacular.” The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1530. Ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans. University Park: Penn State P and Exeter: Exeter UP, 1999. 366-70.

“The Jew, the Host and the Virgin Martyr: Fantasies of the Transient Body.” Medieval Virginities. Ed. Sarah Salih, Anke Bernau and Ruth Evans. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2003. 167-86.

“The Production of Space in Chaucer’s London.” Chaucer and the City. Ed. Ardis Butterfield. Cambridge: Brewer, 2006. 39-56.

"The Afterword of Origins: A Response." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 261-68.

Feminist Readings In Middle English Literature: the Wife of Bath and All Her Sect

First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in... more

Body Politics: Engendering Medieval Cycle Drama

Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's …

,,2-7/0,2-7/0&! $ 5-'73908 #:9;,38 4/44:349,984204308,; 73%86:08943825.95480/390,9;9 5,0,39419094... more

Translating Past Cultures?

The Medieval Translator, Jan 1, 1994

Metaphor of translation

M. Baker.(Réd.), Routledge encyclopedia of translation …, Jan 1, 1998

The Notion of Vernacular Theory

Wogan-Browne et al, Jan 1, 1999

Medieval virginities

Chaucer in Cyberspace: Medieval Technologies of Memory and The House of Fame

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Jan 1, 2001

EVANS Memory's History Troilus and Criseyde.pdf

This essay seeks to explore the relationship between memory and history in Chaucer’s Troilus. In ... more This essay seeks to explore the relationship between memory and history in Chaucer’s Troilus. In order to clarify some important differences between the medieval and the postmodern, the essay begins with an analysis of a scene from Christopher Nolan’s film Memento (2000), drawing on the work of the French cultural historian Pierre Nora. If we are now (according to Nora, obsessed with memory, vernacular writers in the later Middle Ages were concerned to intervene in the medieval tradition whereby memory is kept alive through authoritative textual tradition. I argue that Chaucer’s poem participates in the rethinking of vernacularity in terms that do not simply reproduce Criseyde (the focus of the poem’s anxious memorialization) as a figure of loss and/or textual feminine indecidability.

Key words: memory, Chaucer, Troilus, Criseyde, authority, vernacularity, history.

The Book of Margery Kempe Blackwell Companion

Introduction Medieval Narratives: Living On EVANS & MONTERO

What we understand today by the term "narrative" is not universal or transparent. Nor is the cult... more What we understand today by the term "narrative" is not universal or transparent. Nor is the cultural work that narratives do. That work varies across dif fer ent cultures and at dif fer ent times. According to the OED, the two main current definitions of narrative are the "spoken or written account of connected events; a story," and the "practice or art of telling stories." The first definition highlights the emplotting aspect of narrative, namely that it does more than describe events because it makes connections between them, while the second points to the narrator's deployment of technique, expertise, and conventions within a defined social situation. Storytelling not only requires skill but also presupposes an audience. Medieval understandings of narrative share these broad modern definitions. But if we look at the more specialized meanings of the term, we see some differences in the range of meanings between now and the Middle Ages.

Introduction: What Is Textual Culture BRAY & EVANS

Our cyborg past : Medieval ar tificial memory as mindware upgrade

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natur... more The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natural-born cyborgs,' that is, they have always collaborated and merged with non-biological props and aids in order to find better environments for thinking. These 'mindware' upgrades (I borrow the term 'mindware' from Clark, 2001) extend beyond the fusions of the organic and technological that posthumanist theory imagines as our future. Moreover, these external aids do not remain external to our minds; they interact with them to effect profound changes in their internal architecture. Medieval artificial memory systems provide evidence for just this kind of cognitive interaction. But because medieval people conceived of their relationship to technology in fundamentally different ways, we need also to attend to larger epistemic frameworks when we analyze historically contingent forms of mindware upgrade. What cultural history adds to our understanding of embedded cognition is not only a recognition of our cyborg past but a historicized understanding of human reality. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2010) 1, 64–71.

EVANS An Afterword on the Prologue

“Trouble in the Archives”: Review of Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1996) ISBN 0-226-14336-8, Southern Review (Adelaide) 30 (1997): 226-31. ISSN 0038-4526.

Sir Orfeo and Bare Life

“Historicizing Postcolonial Criticism: Cultural Difference and the Vernacular.” The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1530. Ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor and Ruth Evans. University Park: Penn State P and Exeter: Exeter UP, 1999. 366-70.

“The Jew, the Host and the Virgin Martyr: Fantasies of the Transient Body.” Medieval Virginities. Ed. Sarah Salih, Anke Bernau and Ruth Evans. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2003. 167-86.

“The Production of Space in Chaucer’s London.” Chaucer and the City. Ed. Ardis Butterfield. Cambridge: Brewer, 2006. 39-56.

"The Afterword of Origins: A Response." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 261-68.

Feminist Readings In Middle English Literature: the Wife of Bath and All Her Sect

First published 1994 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in... more

Body Politics: Engendering Medieval Cycle Drama

Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women's …

,,2-7/0,2-7/0&! $ 5-'73908 #:9;,38 4/44:349,984204308,; 73%86:08943825.95480/390,9;9 5,0,39419094... more

Translating Past Cultures?

The Medieval Translator, Jan 1, 1994

Metaphor of translation

M. Baker.(Réd.), Routledge encyclopedia of translation …, Jan 1, 1998

The Notion of Vernacular Theory

Wogan-Browne et al, Jan 1, 1999

Medieval virginities

Chaucer in Cyberspace: Medieval Technologies of Memory and The House of Fame

Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Jan 1, 2001

The intersex look

postmedieval, 2018

Deconstruction and Translation , by Kathleen Davis Deconstruction and Translation . By Kathleen Davis . Pp. 120 (Translation Theories Explained). Manchester: St Jerome, 2001. Pb. $19.50

Translation and Literature, 2003

Deconstruction, as Kathleen Davis reminds us in the introduction to this excellent short book, is... more Deconstruction, as Kathleen Davis reminds us in the introduction to this excellent short book, is not a translation theory. As the mantra has it, texts deconstruct themselves. So why should practising translators and translation scholars concern themselves with deconstruction at all? Davis' central argument is that translation and deconstruction (for 'deconstruction' here read 'Derrida') are deeply implicated in one another. Both wrestle with language at its limits, with 'untranslatability', with how to do justice to another's words. They often work with the same texts (Saussure, J. L. Austin, Walter Benjamin's 'The Task of the Translator'). But although Derrida may have become, in Rachel Bowlby's amusing realignment , a 'household' name (Hoover? Dettol?), his work, Davis writes, is still 'strange territory to many translation scholars'. 1 Of course several already engage with deconstruction (Lawrence Venuti, Barbara Godard, Luise von Flotow, Rosemary Arrojo), and Davis refers extensively, if not uncritically, to their work. Yet she does not use Derrida as a way of correcting the past errors of Translation Studies. Her achievement is to uncover the close relations between the fields of deconstruction and translation, patiently and undogmatically clarifying what is at stake for translation in Derrida's critique of logocentrism, and demonstrating the shared bids of both fields for the same territory. But her purpose is also to take readers unfamiliar with Derrida through a series of textual moments that first critique the traditional western understanding of translation as linguistic transfer, and then reorient the field of Translation Studies in relation to how texts 'perform', and to questions of justice. Given the huge range of Derrida's work that touches on translation, Davis has had to practise for herself the kinds of difficult decisions that she discusses in her concluding chapter. For example, she explicitly does not consider (for reasons of space) the far-reaching political ramifications of Derrida's exposure of the 'border' as a constructed limit for feminist, queer, and

The Book of Margery Kempe

Brown/A Companion, 2007

Our cyborg past: Medieval artificial memory as mindware upgrade

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 2010

The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natur... more The philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark has argued that humans have always been 'natural-born cyborgs,' that is, they have always collaborated and merged with non-biological props and aids in order to find better environments for thinking. These 'mindware' upgrades (I borrow the term 'mindware' from Clark, 2001) extend beyond the fusions of the organic and technological that posthumanist theory imagines as our future. Moreover, these external aids do not remain external to our minds; they interact with them to effect profound changes in their internal architecture. Medieval artificial memory systems provide evidence for just this kind of cognitive interaction. But because medieval people conceived of their relationship to technology in fundamentally different ways, we need also to attend to larger epistemic frameworks when we analyze historically contingent forms of mindware upgrade. What cultural history adds to our understanding of embedded cognition is not only a recognition of our cyborg past but a historicized understanding of human reality.

Premodern Places: Calais to Surinam, Chaucer to Aphra Behn (review)

Parergon, 2006

Courtly Love Undressed: Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture

French History, 2006

BOOK REVIEW FORUM The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. By Stephen Greenblatt. W. W. Norton, 2011. A Copyeditor’s Introduction

Exemplaria, 2013

<i>The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280-1520</i> (review)

Parergon, 2000

<i>The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280-1520</i> (review)

Parergon, 2000

Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing, eds., Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections. Indiana University Press, 1994

Medieval Feminist Newsletter, 1994

Review of Evans, Fulton & Matthews, Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight

Parergon, 2008

ABSTRACT

Gender does not equal genitals

postmedieval

The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520

by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne and Ruth Evans

Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, 2000

... generosity. Further copyediting work by Stephanie Dayes, Amber Raiz, Beata Pawlowska, and Ade... more

Introduction: What is Textual Culture?

Textual Cultures: Text, Contexts, Interpretation, 2007

What is a Chaucer? EVANS presentation Rethinking the Place of the Author panel MLA 2015

EVANS Emotion Cognition and Psychoanalysis Roundtable Kalamazoo 2017

EVANS Liminally Queer response Sewanee 2017 to Druzak and Godsall

Introduction Let me begin by observing that Courtney Druzak's and Jade Godsall's very striking pa... more Introduction Let me begin by observing that Courtney Druzak's and Jade Godsall's very striking papers use very different disciplinary frameworks, and that while the session title Gender and Ecocriticism describes very well the focus and methodology of Druzak's paper, it is not an adequate rubric for Godsall's project, which is not in any sense ecocritical (and was not intended to be). Where both papers coincide is in their interest in queer identity and the medium of water, and in their shared understanding that Galenic humoral theory is not as straight as it seems, but has queer potential. Godsall links the humors to gender identity historically, bringing out the handy-dandy nature of the ideology of the humors that is seen in the medieval link between the Devil and the feminine through his association with water. This allows her to use medieval humoral theory and medical discourse to lever notions of queer identity that are meaningful for readers today, opening up female identity and Catherine's joining with Christ's body in the Dialogues in a completely novel way. Druzak also resists " the binaristic logic of humoral theory " (6), but, by contrast, she argues provocatively that the sea, qua water, in Shakespeare's Pericles, is our " queer, non-binary third parent " (1), and that we are all made up of water and share a kinship with all forms of water, an understanding that provides the theoretical ground for practical activism in the present, namely to protest against the practice of fracking.

Dirty Chaucer A Response EVANS

These are three delightfully dirtyand wonderfully alchemicalpapers. They turn fecal matter, scabb... more These are three delightfully dirtyand wonderfully alchemicalpapers. They turn fecal matter, scabby skin, and smut into fertile ground, eschewing the fragrant, well manicured lawn of critical decorum for the stinky, well manured field, in which new things grow. These papers elevate the excremental, the rusty, and the vulgar to a form of art. 1 Andrea Denny-Brown's "doggerel decorum" insists that Sir Thopas's "drasty [shitty] rhyming" is not an aesthetic failure but the creation of "a new kind of poetic language." William Youngman argues that the repellent bodies of Chaucer's very dirty, very old men are "tied … to narrative enterprise," generating authorial personas (the Reeve as a mirror of Chaucer, blending English and French sources, sporting a rusty blade) and a narrative surplus that is paradoxically produced through lack: "When we cannot do, then we speak." Susan Signe Morrison explores the damage that is done through the culturally widespread "rhetoric of filthing"the construction of what is deemed offensive as uncleanand proposes that we need new metaphors for dirt, to bring out dirty poetry's homeopathic capacity to heal and purify: an ethics of dirt, attuned to the notion of poets as chiffoniers (rag-pickers), treating and transmuting our waste in order to affirm our humanity.

EVANS Chaucerian Rhyme-Breaking.pdf

Getting There: Negotiating the Space of the Road in the Middle Ages

How did European road travellers in the later Middle Ages find their way from one part of a count... more How did European road travellers in the later Middle Ages find their way from one part of a country to another? from one town to another? and within unfamiliar towns and cities? How did they plan their journeys? What aids did they use for getting to their destinations? Such questions seem obvious, yet there has been very little systematic attempt by road historians to answer them. Information about this topic is hard to come by because wayfinding is a practice that of its nature is not likely to leave any traces. The aim of this paper is to survey some of the evidence for medieval wayfinding and to provide some initial answers to these questions. 1 I will draw on a number of different disciplines, including urban studies and space studies, in order to understand the cultural and cognitive aspects of medieval wayfinding practices. 2 I will argue that in the absence of the technological and material aids that we now take for granted medieval travel presumed a culture of human cooperation that is very different from that of today. This paper is also a contribution to the neglected social history of the everyday in the European premodern era. 3 Medieval wayfinding is seldom, if ever, seen as worthy of comment, either by historical travellers or by modern commentators on those travellers. 4 J. J. Jusserand, for example, in his classic study of medieval wayfarers, never refers to the subject. 5 Nor does G.