Dr David Callander

Departmental and College Responsibilities

David is now based at Cardiff University (CallanderD(at)cardiff.ac.uk)

David is a Junior Research Fellow at St Catharine's College. In 2017-18, he worked a post-doctoral research associate on the Vitae Sanctorum Cambriae project, after obtaining his PhD in Anglo-Saxon Norse and Celtic.

David has taught for a wide range of courses in the Faculty of English, the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, and the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages (Linguistics), with a particular focus on medieval literature.

Papers for which he has taught include:

English Part 1 Paper 3: English Literature and its Contexts, 1300-1550
Linguistics Li4: History and Varieties of English
ASNC Part 1 Paper 5: Old English Language and Literature
ASNC Part 1/2 Paper 7: Medieval Welsh Language and Literature
ASNC Part 2 Paper 12: Celtic Philology
ASNC Part 2 Paper 11: Germanic Philology

In addition to supervising finalist dissertations, David has also supervised Medieval Latin and taught Modern Welsh. For the Sutton Trust Summer School, David has also taught a wide range of English literature from the medieval to the modern. David's work has a strong theoretical grounding and he would be delighted to teach courses which engage with theory and close reading, including Practical Criticism.

Academic Interests

Medieval literature, especially Welsh and English; poetics; narrative; textual criticism; comparative literature; saints' lives; post-medieval adaptations and afterlives.

Selected Publications

Dissonant Neighbours: Narrative Progress in early Welsh and English Poetry (University of Wales Press, 2019)

This book investigates where, how, and why early English and Welsh poets chose to deploy narrative. Utilizing in particular the work of William Labov, the narrative and repetitive elements of individual poems are studied in close detail and the book develops models for comparing narrative trends within larger corpora. Sarah Higley's contrastive approach to comparative study of early Welsh and English poetry is developed to highlight the dissonances in the narrative style of the two literatures and examine what this can tell us about wider tendencies in the traditions as a whole.

Articles

‘Troelus a Chressyd: A Translation of the Welsh Adaptation of Troilus and Criseyde’, National Library of Wales Journal 37.2 (2019), 15–73.

‘Die diachrone Entwicklung der Erzählung in der kymrischen Heiligendichtung’ [‘The Diachronic Development of Narrative in Welsh Poetry to Saints’], in Eva von Contzen and Florian Kragl, ed., Narratologie und mittelalterliches Erzählen: Autor, Erzähler, Perspektive, Zeit und Raum [Narratology and Medieval Narrative: Author, Narrator, Perspective, Time and Space] (Berlin, 2018), pp. 101–124.

Thomas, Rebecca and David Callander, ‘Reading Asser in early medieval Wales: the evidence of Armes Prydein Vawr’, Anglo-Saxon England 46 (2017), 115–45.

'Laȝamon’s Dialogue and English Poetic Tradition', English Studies 97 (2016), 709–24.

Kooper, Erik and David Callander, 'The Middle English Life of St Teilo', The Mediæval Journal 6 (2016), 29–72.

'Trefn Canu Llywarch Hen yn Llyfr Coch Hergest' ['The order of the early Welsh poetic group Canu Llywarch Hen in the Red Book of Hergest'], Llên Cymru 38 (2015), 1–11.

‘Datblygiad Armes Dydd Brawd’ [‘The Development of A Prophecy of Judgement Day, an early Welsh Poem’], Studia Celtica 49 (2015), 57–103.

‘The Corruption of Evidence in a Critical Tradition: Welsh and Old English Elegies’, Quaestio Insularis 15 (2014), 108–125.

‘Dau englyn maswedd o Ganu Heledd’ [‘Two erotic verses from the early Welsh poetic group Canu Heledd’], Dwned 20 (2014), 31–6.

‘Middle English ‘cusky’’, Notes & Queries 258 (2013), 365–7.

Reviews

Review of Lindy Brady, Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England, Journal of the English Place-Name Society 50 (2018), 97–8.

Review of Barry Lewis, Medieval Welsh Poems to Saints and Shrines, Studia Celtica 50 (2016), 180–2.