Wearing the werewolf’s skin: Reading medieval literature from the inside out

Join Finn Longman for a discussion of their creative-critical practice: “As an academic, I look at texts from the outside: the world in which they were written, the manuscripts in which they’re found, the scribes who wrote them, the words they used to tell those stories, the narrative a modern reader encounters, and the resonances it might have had for a medieval reader. As an author, however, writing retellings of medieval narratives allows me to experience medieval literature from the inside, discovering how those stories work by telling them. Retelling these tales has taught me how their structure constructs their themes, highlighting repetition, circularity and symmetry; it’s also taught me to notice what is and isn’t explained about the world, revealing the assumptions authors make about material culture, practicalities or values. And these stories demand interpretation, and reworking, which in turn offers insight into the narrative expectations of medieval audiences by highlighting how they differ from those of the modern reader. In this talk, I will discuss what writing The Wolf and His King has taught me about ‘Bisclavret,’ how The Animals We Became has deepened my understanding of ‘Math fab Mathonwy,’ and how both shape and are shaped by my PhD research on friendship in medieval Irish literature.”