The modern medieval romance

“My passion is in the words themselves. Somebody, sometime, many years ago, wrote these words down, and now they’re talking to us again. My desire is to prise them out of their hole and make them come alive.”

These particular words are spoken by Michael Smith, an English with Creative Writing PhD student, who has just completed a two-year, part-time MA in Medieval Literatures and Languages.

A former undergraduate History student at the University of York in the 1980s, Michael is one of a growing number of people returning to higher education to find out more about a subject they feel passionate about. 

“I think what surprised me with the MA was how supportive my fellow students were. Many of them were about the age of my kids. A few of my MA cohort are still friends. I thought I was going to be the old guy in the corner that no one would talk to, but I found that just not to be the case.  It was really encouraging.”

Michael had already completed a mammoth, three-year task of translating a Middle English romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from scratch, so he could use quotes from it in a set of handmade greetings cards he was producing. This led to his first published book, illustrated with his own linocuts. He enjoyed the process so much he went on to produce a second book, King Arthur’s Death, a translation of the 14th-century Alliterative Morte Arthure. 

Seeking to add academic rigour to his work, he asked for advice from Dr Nicola McDonald in York’s Department of English and Related Literature. She suggested he complete an MA before moving on to a PhD. 

“I didn’t really know what I was going to get out of it, to be honest, or how I was going to do, having been so long out of formal education but, after two years, part time, I emerged with a distinction!”

He’s now working on his PhD, once again translating a medieval text, but this time with the additional element of performance. He is trying to understand how a modern audience perceives the medieval world through an alliterative rhyming stanzaic romance. At the end of his PhD he will have produced a book, script, academic work and performance, as well as illustrations using Thin Ice Press, the Department of English and Related Literature’s in-house printing studio. 

“Part of my driving force is making these old romances intelligible to modern audiences, because they carry messages which are still hugely relevant,” he says. “They also shine a light on the development of the English language over time. I was reading the romance William of Palerne recently, and the phrase ‘as dead as a doornail’ leapt out of the ancient text. I thought, ‘Wow! This is 600 years old but here is a phrase we still use today’.”

Michael chose to come back to York for a number of reasons: familiarity, a feeling of unfinished business, but above all the combination of academic rigour, creativity and medieval resources at the University which he feels is second to none.

“I wanted something that was true to me, but had the standards I was looking for. I love stepping out of the station and seeing the city walls in front of me. Coming back to York, I just feel at home.”