Region: Europe; France
Time: Medieval (13th-14th centuries); 16th century; 17th century
Theme: French Literature; Poetry and Poetics; Reformation; Renaissance

Therese Banks graduated in the French section of the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, and she pursued a secondary field in Medieval Studies. Her research explores the intersections and interstices between representations of violence, textual authority, and theological authority in early modern and medieval French literature. More specifically, her work focuses on narrations of “holy war” and the poetics of crusade, questioning how the telling and retelling of violence and violent rhetoric participate in the formation of a French body politic, an imagined vision of society that both builds, and is built by, a worldview dictating what does and does not belong.