Craig Bertolet

Education

PhD, Pennsylvania State University

About Me

Craig E. Bertolet received his PhD from The Pennsylvania State University. He specializes in medieval literature, Chaucer, Medieval London, and culture in literature. He has published articles in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Philological Quarterly, Studies in Philology, and the Chaucer Review. He is the author of Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London. He has coedited with Robert Epstein (Fairfield University) an essay collection titled, Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. He is co-editing with Dr. Susan Nakley, St. Joseph’s University, NYC, The Routledge Companion to Global Chaucer, a collection of 40 essays examining Chaucer’s work in a global context. Additionally, he is working on two book projects. One is tentatively titled Money and the Crisis of Sovereignty in Late Medieval English Literature and the other The State As Exception in Late Medieval English Literature. He is also shopping a novel titled The Swelling Flood.

He teaches mostly courses on medieval literature (especially Chaucer), English Comedy, and core surveys in early British literature. His classes mix discussion with socio-economic and historical background and anecdotal information; he is particularly interested in how texts depict the culture in which they were produced. Language is also an important aspect to his pedagogy, because no matter how much you play with it, you can't break it.

Bertolet has won the following awards: College of Liberal Arts Teaching in the Humanities Award (2010-2011), Outstanding Faculty Member in the College of Liberal Arts (2010), College of Liberal Arts Excellence in Advising Award (2004-2005 and 2006-2007), Department of English Excellence in Administration Award (2015) and Department of English Excellence in Research Award (2018).

Bertolet is also co-director of the AU Summer in London Program with Anna Riehl Bertolet. He has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of English.

Research Interests

medieval literature; cultural studies; Chaucer; critical theory

Publications

• “Ruler Stakes: Chaucer’s Knight, Agamben, and The Rivals to Sovereign Power,” Chaucer Yearbook (2023): FORTHCOMING.
• “Medieval Literature’s Economic Imagination,” in Cambridge Companion to Economics in Literature, Paul Crossthwaite, Nicky Marsh, & Peter Knight (Cambridge: 2022), 19-32.
• “Mercantile Networks,” in Routledge Companion to Medieval Literature in a Trans-European Context, 1100-1500, ed. Raluca Radelescu and Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (Routledge: 2022), 212-22.
• “Poetry in Its Age: Satire and Complaint,” in The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Vol. 2: Medieval Poetry 1100-1400, ed. Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards (Oxford: 2023), 187-99.
• “Dark Money: Gower, Echo, and ‘Blinde Avarice,’” Accessus 5 (2019) 2.4: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/accessus/vol5/iss2/4
• “Visual and Literary Representations,” in The Bloomsbury Cultural History of Shopping, Vol. 6, The Medieval World, ed. James Davis (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 133-54.
• Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature, (Palgrave-McMillan, 2018).
• “Dressing Symkyn’s Wife: The Reeve’s Tale and Bad Taste,” Chaucer Review 52 (2017): 456-75.
• “Jests, Jokes, Pranks, and Play in Chaucer’s Cook’s Tale,” in Open-Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales.
• “Gower’s French Manuscripts,” in Routledge Research Companion to John Gower, ed. R. F. Yeager, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, and Brian Gastle (London: Routledge, 2017), 98–101.
• “Gower’s French Works: Mirour de l’Omme,” in Routledge Research Companion to John Gower, ed. R. F. Yeager, Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, and Brian Gastle (London: Routledge, 2017), 321–27.
• “Social Corrections: Hoccleve’s La Male Regle and Textual Identity,” Papers on Language and Literature 51 (2015): 269-98.
• Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London, (Farnham: Ashgate Press, 2013) .
• "The Anxiety of Exclusion: Speech, Power, and Chaucer's Manciple," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 183-218.
• "Gower and the Canterbury Tales: The Enticement to Fraud," in MLA Approaches to Teaching John Gower, R. F. Yeager and Brian Gastle, eds. (New York: MLA, 2010): 277-90.
• "Chaucer's Cook's Tale," in The Literary Encyclopedia at www.LitEncyc.com
• "'The slyeste of alle': The Lombard Problem in John Gower's London," in John Gower: Manuscripts, Readers, Contexts, ed. Malte Urban (Brepols, 2009), pp. 197-218.
• "Fraud, Division, and Lies: John Gower and London," On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium, ed. R. F. Yeager (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 43-70.
• "'Wel bet is roten appul out of hoord': The Cook's Tale, Commerce, and Civic Order," Studies in Philology 99 (2002): 229-245.
• "Chaucer's Envoys and the Poet-Diplomat," The Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 66-89.
• "'My wit is sharp; I love no taryinge': Urban Poetry and the Parlement of Foules," Studies in Philology 93 (Fall 1996): 365-89.
• "From Revenge to Reform: The Changing Face of 'Lucrece' and Its Meaning in Gower's Confessio Amantis," Philological Quarterly 70 (Fall 1991): 403-21.