Kara Gaston

Kara Gaston

First Name: 
Kara
Last Name: 
Gaston
Title: 
Associate Chair (UTSC); Associate Professor; Graduate Faculty; Undergraduate Instructor
Phone : 
416-208-2235
Office Location : 
Humanities Wing, Room 323, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON M1C 1A4; 120 St George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5.
Biography : 

My research interests include late medieval English and Italian literature, Chaucer, reception of the classics, form and formalisms, vernacular translation, gloss and commentary, and medieval astronomy. My first book, Reading Chaucer in Time: Literary Formation in England and Italy, uses source study to reassess the relation between formation and form in Chaucer's poetry. My current research focuses on literature and astronomy, including the textbooks of Sacrobosco and Al-Farghani and the poetry of Aratus, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Dante, and Chaucer. It explores what it means to think about the cosmos in literary terms and vice versa.

Publications
Books

Reading Chaucer in Time: Literary Formation in England and Italy. Oxford University Press, 2020. 

Articles and Essays 

“Forms and Celestial Motion in Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars,” PMLA. 133 (2018): 282-95

“History Writing After Coppo di Borghese Domenichi: Decameron V.9,” Le tre corone. V (2018): 121-136

“Continental Influences,” in The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of British Medieval Literature, eds. Sian Echard and Robert Rouse.(Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, 2017).

"The Poetics of Time Management from the Metamorphoses to Il Filocolo and The Franklin's Tale," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 227-256.

"'Save Oure Tonges Difference:' Translation, Literary Histories, and Troilus and Criseyde,” The Chaucer Review 48.3 (January 2014): 258-83.

Education: 
AB, Princeton University
M.Phil, University of Cambridge
PhD, University of Pennsylvania

People Type:

Roles:

Research Area:

Areas of Interest: 
  • Medieval Literature
  • Chaucer
  • Trecento Italian literature
  • Form and formalisms
  • Reception of the Classics
  • Medieval Astronomy
Administrative Service: 
Associate Chair, UTSC

Campus:

Meta Description: 
Kara Gaston; Associate Professor; Graduate Faculty; Undergraduate Instructor