Dr. Kevin Whetter
Position: Professor, Mediaeval Literature; Adjunct of the Dalhousie Faculty of Graduate Studies (Mediaeval); Co-Editor of Arthurian Literature.
Office: BAC 422
Phone: 902-585-1388
Email: kevin.whetter@acadiau.ca
Research Interests: My principal research interest is mediaeval romance, a topic I have explored from a variety of interrelated angles and contexts: literary and generic (including developing a theory for genre study and a definition of romance as a genre); historical (including examining romance in its socio-political, religious, and chivalric contexts); and codicological (looking at romances in their manuscript book form). I am especially interested in mediaeval Arthurian romance, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur and its English sources; but I also work in genre theory, epic-heroic literature, and Tolkien studies. I mostly work alone, but have been fortunate to collaborate on different projects with the following leading scholars: Dorsey Armstrong; Raluca L. Radulescu; R. Andrew McDonald; Karen Cherewatuk; Thomas H. Crofts; and, especially, Fiona Tolhurst. Currently, I am Co-Editor of the journal Arthurian Literature (https://boydellandbrewer.com/arthurian-literature/).
Selected Publications: I have published widely with some of the leading mediaeval or Arthurian presses and journals; select publications include:
Arthurian Intertextualities: Misreading and Rereading Malory’s Morte Darthur and the Alliterative and Stanzaic Mortes. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2025. Co-authored with Fiona Tolhurst. This book can be purchased as a hardcopy but is also available in open-access on the Press’ Fulcrum Platform: https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/monographs/sf2687928
“‘Oft leudlez alone’: The Isolation of the Hero and Its Consequences in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Medieval English and Dutch Literatures: The European Context. Essays in Honour of David F. Johnson. Ed. Larissa Tracy and Geert H. M. Claassens. D.S. Brewer, 2022. 249-70.
“Writing the Morte Darthur: Author, Manuscript, and Modern Editions.” A New Companion to Malory. Ed. Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019. pp. 53-78. Co-authored with Thomas H. Crofts. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843845232/a-new-companion-to-malory/
“Standing Up for the Stanzaic-Poet: Artistry, Characterization, and Narration in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Malory’s Morte Darthur.” Arthuriana 28.3 (2018): 86-113. Co-authored with Fiona Tolhurst. [Winner of the James Randall Leader Prize from the International Arthurian Society-North American Branch for the best article on an Arthurian topic published in 2018.]
“Inks and Hands and Fingers in the Manuscript of Malory’s Morte Darthur.” Speculum 92.2 (April 2017): 429-46.
The Manuscript and Meaning of Malory’s Morte Darthur: Rubrication, Commemoration, Memorialization. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017; reprinted in paperback in 2020 with a revised appendix. https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843844532/the-manuscript-and-meaning-of-malorys-imorte-darthuri/
My current major research project, again in collaboration with Fiona Tolhurst, is a classroom edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. This will be a complete edition, in Middle English, based on the Winchester manuscript, but – we hope – more fully glossed than any exiting Morte and employing a new assessment of the manuscript’s punctuation. The edition will eventually be published by Broadview Press.
Teaching: I am a mediaevalist with classicist tendencies, so I teach courses on mediaeval Arthurian literature (Engl 2163); Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Engl 2173); Tolkien and the Middle Ages (Engl 3743); and Heroes and Villains in Pre-Modern Literature (Engl 2113, a study of classical and mediaeval epic-heroic literature). I almost always teach introductory or first-year English (which currently exists either as a year-long format [Engl 1483-1493] or as two one-semester versions [1413 + 1423]; and every few years I teach non-Shakespearean Renaissance Drama (Engl 3293). All of Acadia’s English faculty are concerned to teach the same critical reading and writing skills, but we do so at the first-year level through very different texts; for myself, I focus in the first year on a variety of diverse texts and genres from the classical world through the mediaeval and early modern periods up to the twenty-first century. I bring these different texts, authors and time-periods together through an exploration of a variety of themes, but try to include a focus on heroism, family, gender, genre, and myth.
At the Honours’ or Master’s levels I am happy to supervise research students in Arthurian literature, Chaucer, epic-heroic literature, mediaeval romance, or Tolkien.
I am a firm believer in the value of smaller classes and seminar-based pedagogy, so as much as possible my classes are based on group discussion augmented by lectures. Technology is used where relevant and useful, especially during lectures. With the exception of my Chaucer class, which covers a variety of genres but only one author, most of my courses are built around several different authors, texts, and genres. This includes the Tolkien course, which situates The Lord of the Rings against several of Tolkien’s mediaeval interests.
Graded evaluation in all of my classes is based on written assignments, participation, and an examination at the first-year level, and written assignments, participation, and examination or in-class presentation in the upper-level classes.