Zoey Zisu Zhang-Yang

My research explores ethics, creation, and character ontology as metafictional questions in literature of the late Middle Ages--a period featuring the elevation of fiction, an increased acknowledgement of creativity as a moral and aesthetical value, and the rise of metafiction when texts and authors become increasingly interested in their own literary activities. My dissertation focuses on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, arguing that Chaucer is unique among his contemporaries in his way to dramatize metafictional questions into character experiences, forcing the readers to confront characters' ambiguous ontological status and to reflect on the ethics of character-making.

List of Publications

• (Forthcoming) ‘Knowing Through “Sauoure”: Communicating Crisis in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series.’ Communication in Crisis: Contextualising, Conveying and Coping with Crises in the Medieval Period, edited by Katrín Lísa L. Mikaelsdóttir and Lea D. Pokorny. Budapest, Hungary: Trivent Publishing, 2026.

Conference Presentations

• (Forthcoming) “The Coastal Rocks and the Boundary of Reality: Character and Fiction-Making in Chaucer’s Franklin’s Tale,” 2026 New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress, Freiburg, Germany, July 27-30.
• ‘Gift, Givenness, and “Counter-Experience” in the Middle English Dream Vision Pearl,’ 2024 New Chaucer Society Biennial Congress, Pasadena, California, July 15-18. 2024
• ‘Knowing Through “Sauoure”: Communicating Crisis in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series,’ 2024 International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK, July 1-4, 2024
• ‘“I Knowe Nat Love in Deede”: Aromantic Readers in and of Chaucer’s Courtly Love Tradition,’ 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 9-11, 2024
• “Ælf and the Problem of Interpretation,” 18th International Conference of the Australian Early Medieval Association, Sydney, Australia, September 28-30, 2023