The Writers of Wales Database

PHELPSTEAD, CARL

Email: PhelpsteadC@cf.ac.uk  
Website: www.carlphelpstead.info  

Carl Phelpstead was born in Newport, South Wales, in 1971. He read English Language with Medieval Literature at the University of Sheffield and after a year doing voluntary work with disabled people went on to postgraduate study at the University of Oxford, where he obtained an MPhil in English Medieval Studies 1100–1500 and then completed a doctorate on Old Norse-Icelandic literature.

Carl returned to Wales in 1999 to take up a lectureship in Old English and Old Norse at Cardiff University. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2007 and to Reader in 2010. He is a member of the Council of the Viking Society for Northern Research, an editor of the Society’s journal Saga-Book, and co-editor of its Text Series. He is also on the committee of Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland.

Carl has published widely on medieval English and Icelandic literature as well as on the influence of medieval literature on modern writers, particularly J. R. R. Tolkien. Besides producing two monographs and two edited books he has contributed essays to several book collections and published articles in the following academic journals: Exemplaria, Gripla, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Tolkien Studies, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, Saga-Book, and Scandinavian Studies. Carl is a Member of The Welsh Academy.

Selected Publications:

Holy Vikings: Saints’ Lives in the Old Icelandic Kings’ Sagas (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2007).
Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (University of Wales Press, 2011).

Contributed to:

A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr (editor and contributor) (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001).
The Making of Christian Myths in the Periphery of Latin Christendom (c. 1000–1300) (contributor) (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006).
The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment (contributor) (Routledge, 2006).
Old Norse Made New: Essays on the Post-Medieval Reception of Old Norse Literature and Culture (co-editor and contributor) (Viking Society for Northern Research 2007).
A New Introduction to Old Norse, Part II: Reader (contributor) (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2007).
Fornaldarsagaerne: Myter og virkelighed (contributor) (Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009).
St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint (contributor) (York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer, 2009).
The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages (contributor) (Oxford University Press, 2010).
Chaucer and Religion (contributor) (Boydell and Brewer, 2010).
Making History: Essays on the Fornaldarsögur (contributor) (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2010).

Tolkien and Wales: Language, Literature and Identity (University of Wales Press, 2011)

This book traces the influences of Welsh language and literature on Tolkien’s scholarly and creative writing and on his sense of national identity. Besides famous and less well known published texts, it also draws on unpublished manuscripts and on Tolkien's own collection of Welsh books.

To purchase this title from Amazon.co.uk please click on the front cover