Matthew is studying for his doctorate in English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. Before beginning his MPhil at Oxford in 2014 he completed his BA (Hons) at The University of King’s College in Halifax, NS., winning prizes for his work in medieval English and Early Modern Studies, including the University Medal.
Matthew’s research interests are in Old English and Anglo-Latin Literature, Anglo-Saxon law, history, and literary culture and, specifically, in the corpus of works compiled at the court of King Alfred the Great (871-99).
His doctoral research explores the educational reforms carried out under Alfred and their broader impacts on the Anglo-Saxons – how did these texts construe Alfred’s royal authority and persuade their recipients to undertake the reforms the king had envisioned? In the case of collaboratively authored texts, what is to be made of their use of the king’s voice, expressed in the first-person? And to what extent did Alfred’s court inform his authority as king? Matthew is interested especially in King Alfred’s law-code, or domboc, which is the longest and most significant legal code promulgated in England before Magna Carta. This work, alongside several others including a medical text known as Bald’s Leechbook, Alfred’s treaty with the Viking king, Guthrum, and the king’s royal will, have become a focal point of his research on Alfred’s court and its production of Old English translations of Latin works. His thesis aims to reveal the intellectual foundation upon which Alfred would construct his empire, including important influences from Continental contacts and a significant debt to Latin learning.
Matthew’s work on a database of rare words and hapax legomena relevant to his thesis promises to contribute to the ongoing research at the Toronto Dictionary of Old English. This dictionary, originally conceived in 1968 and currently complete up to the letter ‘I’, is perhaps Canada’s greatest contribution to the study of the English language. The Toronto Dictionary of Old English documents the first six centuries of English usage, from 600-1150AD; it is the source upon which most subsequent etymological dictionaries depend.
Matthew has taught at Oxford and offered language tutorials in Old English at the Bodleian Library, including at the 2018 exhibition ‘Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth’. He has forthcoming publications in the Exeter College Register and in the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Medieval Worlds. In the past, (but not quite the eighth century), Matthew appeared as a Viking warrior in Nova Scotia’s only film adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, entitled Outlander. He hopes to continue with work on Old English poetry, including on Beowulf, in the future.
