Fiona Whelan

The core of my research is the twelfth century Latin courtesy poem entitled 'Urbanus Magnus' which is attributed to Daniel of Beccles. This is a poem dedicated to manners and the cultivation of a civilised life, aimed primarily at clerics although its use extends to nobility, knights, monks, women, etc. The notion of audience and readership is key to my research. Through close analysis of the surviving manuscripts which contain full or partial copies of this text, I aim to assess its place within the corpus of medieval courtesy texts. I intend to translate the text, and analyse its literary, didactic, and educational purposes. More broadly, I am interested in exploring the theme of courtesy literature and education in manners in the 12th and 13th century, with a focus on England and France, and to investigate its influence on contemporary social life as evidenced through literature and the visual arts.