Hello! I’m Daniel Sawyer, currently a lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London and an academic visitor at Oxford.
I pursue questions about how and why texts work. I tackle these questions using close reading alongside other bodies of expertise, chiefly codicology (the systematic, part-quantitative study of physical manuscripts) and textual criticism (the study of the transmission of texts and the practice of editing them).
I’m currently writing my third book, provisionally titled New Verse-Craft in English, 1087–1530. I’ve written the first complete guide to Middle English and early Scots verse-craft (2024) and the first book-length history of reading for later Middle English verse (2020).
I’ve worked on in an edition-in-progress of the Wycliffite Bible, the first full translation of the Bible into English, and I’ve also edited two of the Canterbury Tales for the Cambridge Chaucer project. I’ve published on topics such as the earliest English sonnet (1448/9), the lost manuscripts of medieval England, the uses of Middle English in more recent times by Thom Gunn and Jack Spicer, and rediscovered manuscript fragments.
I teach across palaeography, codicology, textual criticism, and English literature from the earliest surviving English up to the seventeenth century, and modern medievalism.
On this site you can find details of my research and my career, and my blog, which primarily notes new publications.
Contact Details
Email: daniel [dot] sawyer [at-sign] ell.ox.ac.uk
Bluesky: danielsawyer.bsky.social; Twitter: @DE_Sawyer
ORCiD: 0000-0003-4584-236X