Dr. Peggy Knapp

Biography

Peggy Knapp is a Professor Emerita in the Department of English at Carnegie Mellon University. Her academic interests primarily focus on the discovery of imaginative argumentative texts from medieval and early modern England through the lens of literary aesthetic theory. She founded and edited an annual book series called Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts, which serves as an international forum for discussing critical questions. Knapp has authored several significant book-length studies, including Style in John Wyclif's English Sermons, Chaucer and the Social Contest, Time-Bound Words: Semantic and Social Economies in Chaucer's England and Shakespeare's Works, and Chaucerian Aesthetics. In addition to her own research, she has written on figures such as Shakespeare, Jonson, and Wycherley, as well as on contemporary authors and critics. Currently, she is working on a project titled Medieval Romance: Aesthetics and Possibility.

Research Interests