English Department Faculty
Eric Weiskott
Professor; Director, Honors Program
Eric Weiskott
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S407
Telephone: 617-552-3718
Email: weiskott@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Wesleyan University
- Ph.D., Yale University
Research Interests
poetry and poetics; poetic meter; periodization; genre; manuscript studies; early English literature; contemporary poetry.
Department
Monographs
- Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
- English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)
Scholarly Editions
- William Langland, Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the A-text, ed. Eric Weiskott (University of Exeter Press, forthcoming)
- with the assistance of Celia Smithmier, “The Death of Blanche the Duchess,” in The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge University Press, under contract)
Book-length poetry/translation
- Cycle of Dreams (North Haven, CT: punctum books, 2024)
Edited Collections
- with Irina Dumitrescu, The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2019)
- with Stephanie L. Batkie, “Chaucer’s Langland,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 237-389
- with Natalie Gerber, “Prosody: Alternative Histories,” in Arcade: Literature, Humanities, and the World (launched December 2018)
Articles
- “The Authenticity of the Rubrics in the A-text of Piers Plowman,” Medium Ævum (forthcoming)
- “Before Chaucer, Inc.: Thomas Pope Blount’s Literary History,” Chaucer Review (forthcoming)
- “Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia, the Epistola to Archbishop Arundel, and John Gower’s Process of Revision,” Journal of Medieval Latin (forthcoming)
- “Maximianus and William Langland on Impotence,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen (forthcoming)
- “Thomas Campbell and the Unmaking of John Gower,” Leeds Medieval Studies (forthcoming)
- “‘Coins of a former age’: Thomas Tyrwhitt’s ‘Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer’ (1775) and English Historical Metrics,” Modern Philology 123 (2025)
- “John Weever’s Copies of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer,” Mediaevalia 46 (2025)
- “Avant-Garde Difficulty and the Shape of Claudia Rankine’s Poetic Career,” Critical Quarterly (online)
- “Enigma, Audience, Locale: The Ruin as a Riddle,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 123 (2024): 137-56
- “‘I’m on the dark side of the road’: Bob Dylan, William Langland, and Being Already Gone,” postmedieval 15 (2024): 329-46
- “Middle English fobbere and the Critical Editing of Piers Plowman,” English Studies 105 (2024): 529-35
- “Poetry and the Inapprehensible: A Genealogy,” ELH 91 (2024): 629-62
- “Real Magic in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Essays in Criticism 74 (2024): 422-48
- “Ricardian Poetry in Florence Converse’s Long Will (1903),” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 287-95
- “William Langland, ‘Father of English Poetry’: Thomas Dunham Whitaker’s Piers Plowman,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 118 (2024): 559-91
- “The Elusive Transformation of Alliterative Meter,” Chaucer Review 58 (2023): 208-31
- “‘Loquela gravis iuvat’: Gower’s O deus immense and the Place of Poetry, 1398-1400,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 45 (2023): 205-46
- “Lost Sheep: Metaphor and Simony in John Gower’s Latin Poetry,” Studia Neophilologica 95 (2023): 307-17
- “Cumulative Revision in John Gower’s Quicquid homo scribat,” English Studies 103 (2022): 547-54
- “Gower’s Quatrains: Language, Rhyme, Occasion,” English Studies 103 (2022): 777-86
- “The Meter of the Ophni and Phineas Insertion in Piers Plowman,” Studia Metrica et Poetica 9.2 (2022): 117-32
- “English PhD Stipends in the United States: Statistical Report,” Profession Fall 2022
- “Futures Past: Prophecy, Periodization, and Reinhart Koselleck,” New Literary History 52 (2021): 169-88
- with Ian Cornelius, “The Intricacies of Counting to Four in Old English Poetry,” Language and Literature 30 (2021): 249-75
- “A Checklist of Short and Fragmentary Unrhymed English Alliterative Poems, 1300-1600,” Notes and Queries 67 (2020): 340-47
- “The End of the Line? Alliterative Meter, Macaronic Style, and Piers Plowman,” Studies in Philology 117 (2020): 225-39
- “English Political Prophecy and the Problem of Modernity,” postmedieval 10 (2019): 8-21
- “The Exeter Book and the Idea of a Poem,” English Studies 100 (2019): 591-603
- “Political Prophecy and the Form of Piers Plowman,” Viator 50 (2019): 207-47
- with Stephanie L. Batkie, “Introduction,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 237-44 (for “Chaucer’s Langland” essay cluster, as above)
- “Manley Hopkins’ Copy of Piers Plowman: Medievalism and Historicism,” Hopkins Quarterly 45 (2018): 101-18
- “Alliterative Meter and English Literary History, 1700-2000,” ELH 84 (2017): 259-85
- “Early English Meter as a Way of Thinking,” Studia Metrica et Poetica 4 (2017): 41-65
- “The Ireland Prophecy: Text and Metrical Context,” Studies in Philology 114 (2017): 245-77
- “A New Text of the Marvels of Merlin,” Journal of the Early Book Society 19 (2016): 227-39
- “Before Prosody: Early English Poetics in Practice and Theory,” Modern Language Quarterly 77 (2016): 473-98
- “Grass-Bed: A Poetic Compound in the Alliterative Tradition,” Anglia 134 (2016): 587-603
- “Piers Plowman and the Durable Alliterative Tradition,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 30 (2016): 123-73
- “Prophetic Piers Plowman: New Sixteenth-Century Excerpts,” Review of English Studies 67 (2016): 21-41
- “Systematicity, a Missing Term in Historical Metrics,” Language and Literature 25 (2016): 328-42
- “Alliterative Metre and the Textual Criticism of the Gawain Group,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 29 (2015): 151-75
- “The Meter of Widsith and the Distant Past,” Neophilologus 99 (2015): 143-150
- “Old English Poetry, Verse by Verse,” Anglo-Saxon England 44 (2015): 95-130
- “Chaucer the Forester: The Friar’s Tale, Forest History, and Officialdom,” Chaucer Review 47 (2013): 323-36
- “Phantom Syllables in the English Alliterative Tradition,” Modern Philology 110 (2013): 441-58
- “Making Beowulf Scream: Exclamation and the Punctuation of Old English Poetry,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 111 (2012): 25-41
Book Chapters
- “English Prophecy Books: Genre, Compilation, Periodization,” in Poetics before Modernity: Literary Theory in the West from Antiquity to 1700, ed. Vladimir Brljak and Micha Lazarus (Oxford University Press, under contract)
- “Prophecy and Verse Form in Witchcraft Drama: Macbeth and Mother Bombie,” in Early Modern Witch Plays: A Critical Reader, ed. Todd Andrew Borlik (Bloomsbury, under contract)
- “Prose Form and Poetic Metre,” in The Oxford Handbook of Middle English Prose, ed. Sebastian Sobecki and Emily Steiner (Oxford University Press, under contract)
- “Angst and Asymptote: The Success Motif in Nabokov’s Fiction,” in Nabokov on the Heights: New Studies from Boston College, ed. Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston: Academic Studies, 2025), 44-61
- “Rhythm,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Poem, ed. Sean Pryor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), pp. 133-48
- “Verse Forms and Prosody,” in The Oxford History of Poetry in English, Volume 3: 1400-1500, ed. Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 76-90
- “Charles d’Orléans’ English Metrical Phonology,” in Charles d’Orléans’ English Aesthetic: The Form, Poetics, and Style of “Fortunes Stabilnes”, ed. R. D. Perry and Mary-Jo Arn (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020), pp. 122-44
- “The Idea of Bede in English Political Prophecy,” in Remembering the Medieval Present: Generative Uses of England’s Pre-Conquest Past, 10th to 15th Centuries, ed. Jay Paul Gates and Brian O’Camb (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 270-88
- with Irina Dumitrescu, “Introduction,” in The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History, ed. Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2019), pp. 1-12
- “The Paris Psalter and English Literary History,” in The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History, ed. Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2019), pp. 107-34
- “Alliterative Verse,” in Oxford Bibliographies in British and Irish Literature, ed. Andrew Hadfield (2018)
- “Multispectral Imaging and Medieval Manuscripts,” in The Routledge Research Companion to Digital Medieval Literature, ed. Jennifer E. Boyle and Helen J. Burgess (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 186-96
- “Puns and Poetic Style in Old English,” in Etymology and Wordplay in Medieval Literature: Poetry, Hypothesis, and Experience in the European Middle Ages, ed. Mikael Males (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 191-211
- “William Langland’s Piers Plowman,” in Major Authors and Movements in British Literature, ed. Kirilka Stavreva, for the electronic resource Gale Researcher (2017)
- “Alliterative Meter after 1450: The Vision of William Banastre,” in Early English Poetic Culture and Meter: The Influence of G. R. Russom, ed. Lindy Brady and M. J. Toswell (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2016), pp. 149-79
- “Lawman, the Last Old English Poet and the First Middle English Poet,” in Laʒamon’s "Brut" and Other Medieval Chronicles: 14 essays, ed. Marie-Françoise Alamichel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013), pp. 11-57
Notes and Encyclopedia Entries
- “‘Done before their eyes’: William Winstanley and Chaucer’s Comeback,” Notes and Queries (forthcoming)
- “A Conjecture for Piers Plowman A.12.15,” Notes and Queries (online)
- “Joseph Ritson and the Versions of Piers Plowman, Again,” ANQ (online)
- “A New Source for a Latin Verse in Piers Plowman B,” Notes and Queries (online)
- “A New Source for the Unnamed phisicien in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess,” The Explicator (online)
- “The Rubrics Planned for Piers Plowman in the Vernon Manuscript,” Notes and Queries (online)
- “Two Sources for John Gower’s ‘Ad mundum mitto,’” ANQ (online)
- “William Thynne’s Copy of the Book of the Duchess,” The Library 26 (2025): 49-53
- “George Ellis Defends William Langland (1801),” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 101-105
- “How Joseph Ritson Scanned Piers Plowman,” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 230-32
- “The Politics of Prophecy in Mum and the Sothsegger,” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 154-57
- “Some Mislineations in Piers Plowman A: The End of the Line for Scribes and Editors,” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 19-23
- “Thomas Tanner’s Bibliotheca brittanico-hibernica (1748) and the Canonicity of Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, his Owne Scriveyn,” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 445-46
- “‘The veil of fiction’: Thomas Warton on Gower and Chaucer (1754),” Notes and Queries 71 (2024): 220-24
- “Victoria Chang’s Poetic Signature,” The Explicator 82 (2024): 95-7
- “Alliterative Verse,” in The Chaucer Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Newhauser (4 vols.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2023), 54-7
- “Caesura and Syntax in Piers Plowman A.10.210,” Notes and Queries 70 (2023): 242-43
- “Dreaming of Cicero in John Gower’s Cultor in ecclesia,” ANQ 36 (2023): 462-63
- “The Eagle Has Landed: A Prophetic Pun in John Gower’s Cronica tripertita,” ANQ 36 (2023): 319-20
- “Flesh and Veil: Anglo-French Wordplay in Ada or Ardor,” The Nabokovian 84 (2023): [1-3]
- “Linguistic Change and Metre: A Reply,” Notes and Queries 70 (2023): 54-5
- “Meter and Metrics,” in The Chaucer Encyclopedia, ed. Richard Newhauser (4 vols.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 2023), 1213-15
- “Claudia Rankine and Robert Lowell, Again,” The Explicator 80 (2022): 103-105
- “The Date and Style of John Gower’s Ecce patet tensus,” Notes and Queries 69 (2022): 277-81
- with Joon Park, “Middle English araten and Scenes of Condescension in Piers Plowman,” The Explicator 80 (2022): 73-7
- “Nicolay Yakovlev’s Theory of Old English Meter: A Reply,” ANQ 35 (2022): 433-36
- “The Occasion of John Gower’s Unanimes esse,” Notes and Queries 69 (2022): 192-96
- “On the Oxymora in John Gower’s Est amor in glosa,” Notes and Queries 69 (2022): 273-77
- “The Subject of John Gower’s Dicunt scripture,” Notes and Queries 69 (2022): 196-98
- “William Langland Translates Cicero,” Medium Ævum 91 (2022): 334-38
- “John Gower and ‘John of Bridlington’: An Unnoticed Borrowing,” Notes and Queries 68 (2021): 160-62
- “On Emending Beowulf 2088a,” ANQ 34 (2021): 9-10
- “Proverbs and Chaucer’s Metrical Practice,” Notes and Queries 68 (2021): 253-55
- “Stanza-Linking in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Phenomenology of Narrative,” Neophilologus 105 (2021): 457-61
- “A New Conjecture for Book of the Duchess 1315,” Notes and Queries 67 (2020): 12-13
- “Further Emendation of Piers Plowman C.3.142,” Notes and Queries 67 (2020): 474
- “‘Galoches’ in Wynnere and Wastoure and Piers Plowman,” Notes and Queries 67 (2020): 182-85
- “The Syntax of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 77,” Notes and Queries 67 (2020): 474-75
- “A Metrical Duck-Rabbit in the Old English Charm Against a Wen,” Notes and Queries 66 (2019): 347-49
- “A Sixteenth-Century Political Prophecy Inspired by Piers Plowman,” Notes and Queries 66 (2019): 217-19
- “Seinte Loy: A Metrical Non-Problem in Chaucer’s General Prologue,” Notes and Queries 66 (2019): 361-63
- “William Langland’s First First Word,” Notes and Queries 66 (2019): 509-10
- “A New Text of the Middle English Short Charter of Christ,” Notes and Queries 65 (2018): 478-80
- “Antedatings of ‘the Dark Ages,’” Notes and Queries 65 (2018): 483-84
- “The First Recorded References to ‘Blank Verse,’” Notes and Queries 65 (2018): 494-95
- “Adam Scriveyn and Chaucer’s Metrical Practice,” Medium Ævum 86 (2017): 147-51
- “More Prophetic Piers Plowman,” ANQ 30 (2017): 133-36
- “Saint Kenelm in an Imaginative Illustration,” Notes and Queries 64 (2017): 217-20
- “A Postdating of Throw ‘Time’ in Twelfth Night,” Notes and Queries 63 (2016): 421-22
- “An Overlooked Excerpt from Thomas of Erceldoune,” Notes and Queries 63 (2016): 18-19
- “An Oxymoron in Beowulf,” ANQ 29 (2016): 51-2
- “A Plea for Pronunciation,” in “Old English across the Curriculum: Contexts and Pedagogies,” ed. Haruko Momma and Heide Estes, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 22 (2015): 41-2
- “Beowulf 2910a ‘leofes ond laðes,’” Notes and Queries 62 (2015): 188-90
- “Another New Fragment of Speculum Vitae,” Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014): 352-55
- “Bawdyng, a Middle English Hapax Legomenon,” Notes and Queries 60 (2013): 24
- “OE lændagas in Beowulf 2341b,” Notes and Queries 60 (2013): 485-87
- “Three-Position Verses in Beowulf,” Notes and Queries 60 (2013): 483-85
- “A Semantic Replacement for Kaluza’s Law in Beowulf,” English Studies 93 (2012): 891-96
- “OE Panther 74b ‘Þæt is æþele stenc,’” Notes and Queries 59 (2012): 5-6
- “Three Beowulf Cruces: healgamen, fremu, Sigemunde,” Notes and Queries 58 (2011): 3-7
Public Writing
- “Who Can Live on a Ph.D. Stipend?,” Chronicle of Higher Education 2 September 2022
- “The Coronavirus Time Warp,” Public Seminar 10 April 2020
- “Stop Calling Trump ‘Medieval,’” Vox 25 February 2019
- “Poetry reading is on the upswing/Why It Matters That More Americans Read Poetry Now,” Inside Higher Ed 19 November 2018
- “Why educate?” Boston College Magazine winter 2018: 48-9
- “What Is Education For? – To Kill a Mockingbird and Medieval Literature,” How Did We Get into This Mess? 30 November 2017
- “There Is No Such Thing as ‘the Digital Humanities,’” Chronicle of Higher Education 1 November 2017
- “What’s the Point of Learning? Piers Plowman and Education Today,” Fair Field 3 October 2017
- “The 13th-century revolution that made modern poetry possible,” Aeon 15 September 2017
- “Did the Middle Ages End?” The Medieval Magazine 31 July 2017
- “Millennial bashing in medieval times,” The Conversation 5 July 2017
- “Teaching with Collaborative Digital Textbooks,” Inside Higher Ed 14 June 2017
- “History in the Future Tense,” The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought 1 May 2017
- “Petitions and the Power of Poetry/Students Should Be Taught New Kinds of Poetry,” Inside Higher Ed 14 April 2017
- “Feeling ‘British,’” The Public Medievalist 28 March 2017
- “There’s Nothing Medieval about Trump,” How Did We Get Into This Mess? 23 February 2017
- “Poor people, in the abstract,” Times Literary Supplement 19 January 2017
- “Before ‘Fake News’ Came False Prophecy,” The Atlantic 27 December 2016