Sherry L. Reames

Professor
slreames@wisc.edu

Degrees and Institutions

PhD, Yale University, 1975

Research Interests

Chaucer and his contemporaries, saints' legends, Middle English language, medieval liturgy and church history, medieval drama, women in medieval and early modern society, late-medieval manuscripts

Selected Publications

The Legenda Aurea: A Reexamination of Its Paradoxical History (1985); “A Recent Discovery concerning the Sources of Chaucer’s ‘Second Nun's Tale,’” Modern Philology 87 (1989-90); “The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale,” in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales (2002); Middle English Legends of Women Saints (annotated collection of texts, edited with the assistance of Martha G. Blalock and Wendy R. Larson, 2003); “Origins and Affiliations of the Pre-Sarum Office for Anne in the Stowe Breviary,” in Music and Medieval Manuscripts: Paleography and Performance (2004); “Reconstructing and Interpreting a Thirteenth-Century Office for the Translation of Thomas Becket” Speculum 80 (2005)

Current Projects

Completing a descriptive inventory of the hagiographical texts in Sarum breviary manuscripts  and continuing research on liturgical offices and lessons for selected saints’ days in late-medieval England

Teaching

I regularly teach beginning Old English, Middle English language and paleography, undergraduate courses on Chaucer and other major figures in early English literature, and graduate courses on Chaucer, courtly traditions in medieval England, and religious literature in the late Middle Ages.