Simon Heller

I wrote my DPhil thesis on the reception of the Old English poem Beowulf in the United States in the late twentieth century, and my current research is very much a continuation of that project. I’m particularly interested in the way Old English literature and medieval English history have been co-opted by conflicting ideologies and in service of opposing political purposes both in academia and in popular culture. 

At Trinity, I teach Prelims Paper II (Early Medieval Literature, 650–1350) to first-year undergraduate students, walking them through the Old English language and literature of early medieval England. 

I fulfil a similar role but aimed at more diverse audiences as the departmental tutor in Old English at Oxford Lifelong Learning.  

My research focuses on medieval texts and their afterlives, but my area of expertise is the Old English poem Beowulf and its myriads of adaptations. 

I have contributed to OUP’s bibliographic review volume The Year’s Work in English Studies on the topic of Old English reception since 2023. I am currently turning my DPhil thesis into a monograph, and I am working on articles about the connection between Beowulf and the Mercian/East Anglian fenlands in the eighth century as well as on Cormac McCarthy’s Old English medievalism.