Research Interests
My research interests lie predominantly in the field of French and Occitan language and literature of the 12th-15th centuries, although I also supervise linguistic, literary and interdisciplinary research in French and francophone cultures of other periods (e.g. Canadian, Amerindian, Creole), covering inter alia dialectology, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and the language of art-song and cinema.

An occitaniste by training, I have edited several previously unpublished fragments of late medieval vernacular literature from the south of France, including one from a poem found in a book- binding in Glasgow University Library. My study of other newly- discovered secular and devotional fragments has appeared as Glanures occitanes recueillies dans trois livres d'Heures (fin XIVe s. - XVe s.), 1993. Other publications include: La Batalha de la lenga (in collaboration with David M. Bickerton), 1991, featuring a video documentary on the struggle to preserve Occitan as a living language in the Languedoc region (30 minutes, awarded first prize at the 1er Festival Audiovisuel des Cultures Minorisées d'Europe, Limoges); Rewards and Punishments in the Arthurian Romances and Lyric Poetry of Medieval France: Essays presented to Kenneth Varty (conference papers edited in collaboration with Angus J. Kennedy), 1987; and Regional Varieties of French: Problems and Solutions in Teaching (edited in collaboration with Kenneth Varty), 1987.

In recent years I have turned my attention to the prosody of Christine de Pizan, the first professional woman writer in Europe, and am currently working on a two-volume Répertoire rimico- métrique of her considerable poetic achievement, intended as an aid to further research. I am also about to edit the papers of a (predominantly postgraduate) international conference on Contemporary Francophone Identities (sponsored by the British Academy and the Society for French Studies) to be held in Glasgow in October 2001. In due course, however, I intend to return to the study of troubadour poetry, my initial field of research, and am looking forward to producing a new critical edition of one of the most famous of twelfth-century troubadours, Bernart de Ventadorn.