Ian Shiels

I am a Postgraduate Researcher at the Institute for Medieval Studies at Leeds University. I am a doctoral candidate in my third and final year, and my thesis is entitled Ridiculae Fabulae: Story and History in the Poetry of the Exeter Book. It is about the narratives behind the poems Wulf and Eadwacer, the Old English Elegies, Deor and Widsith, investigating the stories – often historical – which lie behind them and which Anglo-Saxon audiences would have known but critics today mostly do not bother about.

My area of study is medieval secular (often called “heroic”) poetry in Old English, Old Norse and Old High German, and the Icelandic family sagas. I am particularly interested in understanding the cultures and societies which produced, consumed (and criticised or ignored) this literature, the ideas and beliefs which informed it, and the means by which it was transmitted. The article I discuss in The Conversation is a good example of my theme and method.