Anya Erica Jane Burgon

I work on the related histories of medieval literature, aesthetics, and philosophy.  I am particularly interested in the role of imagination, aesthetic experience, and the ’poetic’ in medieval intellectual culture.

My doctoral thesis, submitted in 2018, was entitled The Mechanical Arts and Poiesis in the Philosophy and Literature of the Twelfth-Century Schools.  It examined the use of craft metaphors to describe how we 'make' divine knowledge in twelfth-century literature, centring on the works of scholars at Paris and Chartres - such as Hugh of Saint-Victor and Bernardus Silvestris.  

As a postdoctoral fellow I am working on a new project, on the legacy of an ancient ideal of the cosmic viewpoint or 'view from above' in the art and literature of the Middle Ages with a focus on Middle English literature and Chaucer.