Steven Rozenski

Associate Professor

PhD, Harvard University

Office Location
416 Morey

Research Overview

Steven Rozenski studies late medieval English and German literature and devotional culture, focusing particularly on the translation and adaptation of Continental contemplative texts in England before and after the Reformation (ca. 1300-1600). He has written about medieval concepts of authorship, the role of aurality and music in Dominican mysticism, poetic form and bridal mysticism in Netherlandish beguine texts, multilingualism in German Marian poetry, as well as the interaction of text and image in illuminated manuscripts. As a translator of medieval German, Steven has published (with Klaus Pietschmann) selections of the verse autobiography of the fifteenth-century German singer and composer Johannes von Soest. He discovered -- and with C.J. Jones edited and translated -- a medieval German meditation on the Crucifixion. He has recently completed a book on trans-Reformation English spirituality, and is currently editing The Monk's Tale and The Manciple's Tale for the Cambridge Chaucer under the general editorship of Julia Boffey and A.S.G. Edwards. His research has been supported with grants from the U.S.-U.K. Fulbright Commission, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Houghton Library, and the Folger Institute.

Research Interests

  • Middle English devotional literature
  • translation studies
  • book history
  • medieval German and Dutch literature
  • trans-Reformation England

Selected Publication Covers

Wisdoms Journey cover

Selected Publications

  • Wisdom’s Journey: Continental Mysticism and Popular Devotion in England, 1350-1650 (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022)
  • Goddesses, Mystics, Lovers, and Teachers: Medieval Visions and Their Legacies – Studies in Honour of Barbara Newman (with Joshua Byron Smith and Claire Waters: forthcoming 2023, Brepols)
  • “Ave Ave Ave [Ave]: Bruder Hans and the Multilingual Poetics of Exuberance.” New Medieval Literatures 20 (2020): pp. 107-42
  • Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and its Afterlives (with Julia Perratore and Elisa Foster), Leiden: Brill, 2018
  • "Authority and Exemplarity in Henry Suso and Richard Rolle" in The Medieval Mystical Tradition, ed. E.A. Jones (2013)
  • "The Promise of Eternity: Love and Poetic Form in Hadewijch's Liederen or Stanzaic Poems" in Exemplaria 22/4 (2010)
  • "'Your Ensaumple and Your Mirour': Hoccleve's Amplification of the Imagery and Intimacy of Henry Suso's Ars Moriendi" in Parergon 25/2 (2008)

Teaching

  • History of the English Language, Medieval Mysticism, Autobiography 400-1800, Classical and Scriptural Backgrounds