Professor Helen Cooper FBA

College positions: Life Fellow

University position: Emeritus Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English

Subject: English Literature

Group membership: Stipends Committee, Review Committee

Professor Helen Cooper is a Life Fellow of Magdalene and Professor Emeritus of Medieval and Renaissance English in the University of Cambridge.

Professor Helen Cooper was born in Nottingham in 1947 to Peter Kent, an exploration geologist, and Betty, née Hood, who later became Chair of the Nottingham Bench of Magistrates. A committed medievalist from an early age, she was captivated by the rich stories of the medieval period from around the age of four. She was educated at Nottingham High School for Girls, GPDST, and at Cambridge, where she studied at what was then New Hall, now Murray Edwards College, completing her PhD under partial supervision from Magdalene’s JAW Bennett. She also held a Junior Research Fellowship at Cambridge.

In 1978, Professor Cooper was appointed to a Tutorial Fellowship at University College, Oxford, becoming the College's first female Fellow after it had changed its statutes to admit women. Her teaching remit covered the period from 1100 to 1660, with the advertisement noting that "a willingness to teach the twentieth century would be an advantage," which she did for several years. She also served as editor for Old and Middle English for Medium Ævum for a number of years.

She was awarded a personal professorship and a D.Litt. and, in 2004, returned to Cambridge to take up the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English, along with a Professorial Fellowship at Magdalene College. She retired in 2014, although, as with most academics, retirement was a relative term. Her last research student completed their doctorate in 2017, marking the end of a remarkable career spanning 31 doctoral students.

Research Interests

  • Pastoral from Virgil to Milton.
  • Late fourteenth-century literature; Chaucer and the Chaucerian tradition.
  • Romance from Anglo-Norman to the seventeenth century, including The Faerie Queene.
  • Malory and the early Arthurian tradition.
  • Shakespeare and his medieval antecedents.
  • The transition from manuscript to print.

Qualifications

  • BA, Cambridge
  • MA, Cambridge
  • PhD, Cambridge
  • D.Litt, Oxford

Career/Research Highlights

  • Honorary doctorate, Washington and Lee University, Virginia, 2001
  • Fellowship of the British Academy, 2006
  • Chair of the Medieval Studies Section, 2014-17
  • Emeritus Fellowship, University College, Oxford, 2004; Honorary Fellowship, 2009
  • Life Fellowship, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 2014
  • Co-editor/ Executive editor, Medium Ævum, 1989-2002
  • President of the New Chaucer Society, 2000-02
  • Gollancz Lecturer of the British Academy, 2016
  • Senior Tutor, University College, Oxford, 1997-2000
  • Chair of the English Faculty, University of Oxford, 1990-93
  • Chair of the English Faculty, University of Cambridge, 2010-12
  • Cambridge University representative Trustee, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, 2013-17
  • Trustee, The Prince’s Teaching Institute, from 2013

Professional Affiliations

  • Fellow of the British Academy
  • New Chaucer Society
  • Early Book Society

Breaking Through, Leading the Way

KEY PUBLICATIONS

Pastoral: Mediaeval into Renaissance, D.S. Brewer, 1978

The Structure of the Canterbury Tales, Duckworth; U of Georgia Press, 1983

Oxford Guides to Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, Oxford University Press, 1989, 1996

The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, Oxford University Press, 2004

Shakespeare and the Medieval World, Arden Companions to Shakespeare, 2010

The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray, co-edited, Oxford University Press, 1997

Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents, co-edited, Cambridge University Press, 2013

Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte Darthur – The Winchester Manuscript, modern-spelling edition, Oxford World’s Classics, 1998

Email
ehc31@cam.ac.uk

Call
01223 303764