Maryellen Linnehan, Clare Hall

Biographical Information

I hold a B.S. with a double major in Biology and English from Tufts University; a M.F.A. in English from Brown University; a J.D. from Boston University School of Law; and a M.A. in Medieval Literatures and Languages from the University of York, where I was awarded the Derek Pearsall prize for best dissertation. I have also completed postbaccalaureate work in medieval literature at Columbia University.

Research Interests

My research primarily focuses on how trauma is represented and experienced in medieval texts, especially in a gendered context. I’m interested in the transhistorical experience of reading trauma and how medieval readers, and medieval women readers in particular, might have engaged with the embodied nature of reading trauma. My dissertation explores trauma in Chaucer’s works from an interdisciplinary analytical framework of literary trauma theory and cognitive literary theory, intersecting with medieval literary, legal, theological, and philosophical theoretical frameworks.  

Selected Publications

Conference Papers:

‘Philomela as Crisis: A Cognitive Literary Approach to Trauma and Intertextuality in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde', IMC Leeds 2024

‘The Effacement of Trauma: A Cognitive Literary Approach to Trauma in Chaucer’s Women’, New Chaucer Society 2024

“Who Cannot Wepe, Come Lern at Me’: Resistant Female Mourning As Care for the Living and the Dead’, Gender and Medieval Studies Conference 2025

 “I am in þe and þow in me’: The Merger of Self and Other in Margery  Kempe’s Dialogue with the Divine’, IMC Leeds 2025

 “Er I be deed, yet wol I kisse thee’: Trauma and the Teller-Tale Dyad’, New Chaucer Society 2026 (forthcoming)

 “Take Thou Thy Deeth, For This is My Sentence’: Law, Power and Gendered Violence in Chaucer’s The Physician’s Tale', University of Bristol CMS conference 2026    (forthcoming)