Academic interests
- Old Norse saga literature
- Narratology
- Gender Studies
- Gerontology and Disability Studies
- Poetics of Redaction and Compilation
- Old English Poetry
- The Cerne Abbas Giant
Background
Thomas Morcom joined the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas in October 2022 as a Post-doctoral researcher on the ongoing project ‘Narrative Hierarchies: Minor Characters in Byzantine and Medieval History Writing’, funded by the Research Council for Norway. His strand of the project is entitled, 'The Crisis in Patriarchy in Sturlunga saga: Destabilising Gender in Norse Narrative History' and offers an original narratological approach to the complex character systems exhibited by the samtíðarsǫgur.
Prior to this appointment, he was a Teach@Tübingen Research Fellow in the Scandinavian Studies Department, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen (2021-2022) and a Retaining Fee Lecturer and Tutor in both Somerville College and the Faculty of English, University of Oxford (2020-2021).
He was the recipient of the Paul Slack Scholarship in the Humanities at the University of Oxford (Dphil, 2020), and studied English Literature at Durham (BA, 2015; MA, 2016).
Awards
- Margaret Orme Prize, Viking Society for Northern Research
- John McKinnell Prize: Department of English Studies, Durham University
Tags:
Medieval Studies,
Old Norse Literature,
Narratology,
Poetics,
Gender Studies,
Literary Theory
Selected publications
Monographs
Structuring Disruption: The Þættir in the Sagas of Kings. Monograph in preparation with Oxford University Press.
Editions and Translations
Þorgríms þáttr Hallasonar, Hrafns þáttr Guðrúnarsonar, and Gísls þáttr Illu-gasonar, The Northern Medieval World: On the Margins of Europe (Berlin: De Gruyter), Forthcoming.
Edited Collections
with Basil Arnold Price, eds, After the Commonwealth: Texts, Politics, and Identities in Medieval Iceland (1264-1500). Accepted by Brepols. In production.
Journal Articles
with Matthew Kinloch, ‘Regimes of Character’. Journal of Narrative Theory, 55.2 (2025), Forthcoming.
with Helen Gittos, ‘The Cerne Giant in its Early-Medieval Context’, Speculum, 99.2 (2024), 1-38.
‘Agape and the Antichrist: Soteriological and Eschatological Masculinities in the Homilies of Wulfstan,’ in Caroline Batten and Gareth Lloyd Evans, eds, ‘Old English Masculinities’ a special volume of English Studies. Forthcoming.
‘Gossip, Slander, Rumour, and Dreams: Sturla Þórðarson and Challenges to Narratorial Authority in Íslendinga saga’, Beiträge zur Mediävistischen Erzählfroschung. Forthcoming.
'Crying Out for Two Lords: Sex and Supplication in Wulf and Eadwacer’, Leeds Medieval Studies, 2 (2022), 1-18.
‘Insult and Insight: Skarpheðinn’s Performance at the alþingi.’ Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 16 (2020), 158-180.
‘After Adulthood: The Metamorphoses of the Elderly in the Íslendingasögur.’ Saga-Book 42, (2018), 25–50.
Chapters in Edited Collections
‘Hobbled Shieldmaidens and Shapeshifting Kings: The Flexibility of the Fantastic in Bósa saga ok Herrauðs’, in Rebecca Merkelbach, ed., Storyworlds and Worldbuilding in Medieval European Literature, Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols), Forthcoming.
‘None so Blind as those that will not See: Blindness, Wisdom, and Incomprehension in Morkinskinna’, in Anna Katharina Heiniger, Rebecca Merkelbach, Alexander Wilson, eds., Þáttasyrpa – Studien zu Literatur, Kultur und Sprache in Nordeuropa. (Beiträge zur nordischen Philologie, Bd. 71, 2022), 209-218.
‘Inclusive Masculinity in Morkinskinna and the Defusal of Kingly Aggression,’ in Gareth Lloyd Evans and Jessica Hancock, eds., Masculinities in Old Norse Literature, ed. (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020), 127–146.
Book Reviews
Review of: Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington, Sif Rikhardsdottir, eds, A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, in Apardjón Journal for Scandinavian Studies, 3 (2022), Forthcoming.
Review of: Charles MacQuarrie and Joseph Falaky Nagy, eds, The Medieval Cultures of the Irish Sea and the North Sea, in Island Studies, 16.1 (2021), 345-95.
Review of: Haki Antonsson, Damnation and Salvation in Old Norse Literature, in Saga-Book, 43, (2019) 174-175.
Popular Publications
‘The Cerne Abbas Hermit?’ History Workshop Online. 20.05.2021.
Published
Oct. 3, 2022 10:48 AM
- Last modified
May 9, 2024 4:46 PM
