My thesis explores the far-reaching literary and cultural influences, drawn from European and Arabic sources, which informed the development of the dragon as a cultural symbol in English Arthurian literature produced between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. It traces literary-cultural transmission within and across medieval Arthurian works and considers wider political and sociocultural settings, in order to interrogate insular understandings of literary motifs.
My research interests include: Arthurian literatures, medieval motifs, literary-cultural transmission (specifically twelfth-century Latinate-Arabic translators and their translations of Arabic astronomical works), dragons and supernatural monsters, cross-cultural borders, and the representation of insular/ national identities in medieval English works.