Marcus Bull

Research Interests

Marcus Bull joined UNC from the University of Bristol in the fall of 2010. He specializes in medieval history-writing and in the narratology of historiographical texts, as well as in the early crusade movement. More generally he works on the history of the Church and of aristocratic society in western Europe (principally France) between the tenth and twelfth centuries. Publications include Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c.970-c.1130 (Oxford, 1993); The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation (Woodbridge, 1999); and Thinking Medieval: An Introduction to the Study of the Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2005). He has edited France in the Central Middle Ages 900-1200 (Oxford, 2002) in the Short Oxford History of France series; The Experience of Crusading: Western Approaches. Presented to Jonathan Riley-Smith on his 65th Birthday (Cambridge, 2003), with Norman Housley; and The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries (Woodbridge, 2005), with Catherine Léglu. Professor Bull is currently completing a new edition of the Gesta Francorum, a first-hand account of the First Crusade, for Oxford Medieval Texts. Between 2007 and 2010 he was the principal investigator on a major research project on the Historia Iherosolimitana of Robert the Monk, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council. The outputs of this project will include a new edition of Robert’s Historia, the most widely copied and read contemporary account of the First Crusade, co-edited with Dr Damien Kempf of the University of Liverpool; a monograph study, A Medieval Bestseller, co-authored with Damien Kempf, on the creation and reception of Robert’s text; and Eyewitness and Narration, a book-length study of the narratology of the so-called ‘eyewitness’ accounts of the First Crusade, with a particular focus on the Gesta Francorum. Professor Bull is also interested in medievalism and the reception of the pre-modern past in modern culture: in December 2008 he co-organized a major symposium on Tudorism: Historical Imagination and the Appropriation of the Sixteenth Century, the proceedings of which, co-edited with Dr Tania String, are to be published by the British Academy.

Courses Offered (as schedules allow)

For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes

• HIST 292  Aristocratic Culture in the Middle Ages
• HIST 890  Historiography and Narrative