Biography

David Williams, Ph.D. is Professor of Literature. He held the Kennedy-Smith Chair of Catholic Studies at McGill University and spends the spring semesters at Ave Maria University. He has published several books and numerous articles on Old English and Middle English literature. His specialty is in Beowulf studies. Dr. Williams holds the degrees of B.A. from Boston University, and both M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto.

Literary Tradition II

Medieval Literature

Language Redeemed:  Chaucer's Mature Poetry (2007).

Chaucer and Language. Eds. Robert Myles and David Williams (2001).

Deformed Discourse: The Function of the Monster in Mediaeval Thought and Literature (1996).

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: A Literary Pilgrimage (1987).

Cain and Beowulf: A Study in Secular Allegory (1982).

"'Lo how I vanysshe': The Pardoner's War against Signs." in Chaucer and Language. (2001)

"Attentio, Intentio, Distentio: Intentionality and Chaucer's Third Eye," Florelegium 15 (1997).

"From Grammar's Pan to Logic's Fire: Intentionality and Chaucer's Friar's Tale," in Literature and Ethics (1988): 77-95.

"Wilgeforte--Patron Saint of Monsters--and the Sacred Language of the Grotesque," in Scope of the Fantastic (1985): 171-77.

"Radical Therapy in 'The Miller's Tale,'" Chaucer Review 5.3 (1981): 227-35.

"Flannery O'Connor and the Via Negativa," Sciences Religieuses 8.3 (1979): 304-12.

"Exile as Uncreator," Mosaic 8.3 (1975): 1-14.

The interrelation of text, image, and cult in hagiographical narrative.

The nature of the ontology of word in biblical and poetic language.