Skip Navigation Skip to Content Skip to Footer

Dr Ayoush Lazikani

BA, MSt, DPhil

Ayoush has taught Old and Middle English at numerous colleges of the University of Oxford.

Research Interests

Ayoush specializes in devotional writing of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, working especially in the history of emotions. Her research has focused on English, Arabic, Anglo-Norman, Latin, and Persian medieval texts. She has published widely in these areas. Her latest book, a comparative study of medieval Arabic and English texts (Cry of the Turtledove: Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts, 1100-1250), will be published with the New Middle Ages Series at Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.

Selected Publications

Monographs
  • Cry of the Turtledove: Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts, 1100-1250 (New Middle Ages Series; Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming early 2021): https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030599232
  • Cultivating the Heart: Feeling and Emotion in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Religious Texts (Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages Series; Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015).
Journal Articles
  • ‘Encompassment in Love: Rabi’a of Basra in Dialogue with Julian of Norwich’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 46.2 (2020), 115-136.
  • ‘The Vagabond Mind: Depression and the Medieval Anchorite’, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 6 (2017), 141-68.
  • ‘Seeking Intimacy in the Wooing Group’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 43.2 (2017), 157-85.
  • ‘The Wounded Beloved: Affective Wounding in Ancrene Wisse and the Wooing Group’, Leeds Studies in English 47 (2016), 115-35.
  • ‘Liminal Performance in Hali Meiðhad’, Journal of Medieval Religious Cultures 42.1 (2016), 28-43.
Book Chapters
  • ‘Sea-Water in Flame: Compunction in the Lambeth and Trinity Homilies’, in Cultures of Compunction in the Medieval World, ed. Graham Williams and Charlotte Steenbrugge (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
  • ‘What Grace in Presence: Affective Literacies in The Chastising of God’s Children’, in Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 411-432.
  • ‘Moving Lights: An Affective Reading of On leome is in this world ilist and Church Wall Paintings’, in Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems, ed. Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 31-44.
  • ‘Remembrance and Time in the Wooing Group’, in Reconsidering Gender, Time and Memory in Medieval Culture, ed. Elizabeth Cox, Liz Herbert McAvoy and Roberta Magnani (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2015), pp. 79-94.
Reviews
  • ‘Early Middle English’ and ‘Middle English Religious Verse’ for Year’s Work in English (2020 [for 2018]), and ‘Early Middle English’ forthcoming 2021 [for 2019]).
  • Review of Medieval Anchorites in their Communities, ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Cate Gunn (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2017): Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies 7 (2018), 329-332.
  • Review of Speculum Inclusorum: A Mirror for Recluses, ed. E. A. Jones, Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013):  JEGP 114.4 (2015), 596-99.