Professor Yu Onuma
Yu Onuma is interested in the reception of Greek and Roman literature in medieval Europe, in particular England.
She is currently working on descriptions of marvels during the classical and medieval periods and this contributes to her longer-term research question regarding how “travel,” both in the literal and figurative senses of the word, influenced the construction of medieval European identity.
Professor Onuma’s current project looks at how classical descriptions of marvels developed into the medieval understanding of marvels with its more advanced and subtle concepts of the “marvellous” and attitudes towards them. To investigate this, she will analyse both literary descriptions and visual representations. These results will further bring to light the extent to which medieval identity emerged from such transmission of intellectual information.
Yu Onuma has specialised in exploring travel narratives and encyclopaedias, including geographical writings, maps, and bestiaries. She is now widening the scope by including chronicles, since they refer to a variety of supernatural phenomena.
Her early career was dedicated to poems and prose on the adventures of Alexander the Great, focusing on marvels of the East. She then published a body of work on Mandeville’s Travels, discussing topics such as marvels and miracles, self and otherness, transmission of knowledge, and multilingual textual tradition. Subsequently, she turned towards examining how information is passed and modified from classical to medieval encyclopaedias.
She received an MA and a PhD in Literature from Keio University, Tokyo, and an MPhil in Medieval Studies from the University of Birmingham. Since 2009, she has been employed at Doshisha University, in Kyoto, where she teaches English literature and language to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. She has also participated in several joint research projects which have covered Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Japanese literature and culture.
Select publications
- Narrative and Mobility in Medieval Europe, edited by Yu Onuma and Satoko Tokunaga, Chisen Shokan, 2022 [in Japanese]
*including Yu Onuma, “Introduction” (pp. v-viii), and Yu Onuma, “Physical, Mental, and Linguistic Travels: Images of England in the English and French Versions of Mandeville Travels” (pp. 5-21) - “Otherness as an Ideal: The Tradition of the ‘Virtuous’ Indians,” “Otherness” in the Middle Ages, edited by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood, Brepols, 2021, pp. 319-38 [in English]
- “The Great Khan and the Mongols in Mandeville’s Travels: Medieval European Observation and Imagination,” Études Médiévales Anglaises, vol. 95, 2020, pp. 41-66 [in English]
- “Encyclopaedias and Classification of Nature Focusing on European Middle Ages,” The Edges of the World: Inside and Outside of “Nature,” edited by Yuriko Yamanaka and Hitoshi Yamada, Bensei Press, 2019, pp. 55-68 [in Japanese]
- Convention Through Innovation: Marvels in Topographia Hibernica by Gerald of Wales,” Aspetti del meraviglioso nelle letterature medievali: Medioevo latino, romanzo, germanico e celtico, edited by Franca Ela Consolino, Lucilla Spetia, and Francesco Marzella, Brepols, 2016, pp. 69-80 [in English]
- “Marvels and Medieval European Travel Narratives to the East,” “Wonders of the East: Descriptions of Gigantic Ants in Classical and Medieval Europe,” Cultural History of Marvels in the Middle East and Europe, edited by Yuriko Yamanaka, Nagoya UP, 2015, pp. 95-112, 220-36 [in Japanese]
- “Wonders of the East and Natural History,” Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies, vol. 83, 2015, pp. 19-36 [in English]
- “Through the Eyes of Travellers: Classical and Medieval Views of Exotic Marvels,” Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature, vol. 27, 2012, pp. 59-78 [in English]
Select Awards
- Conference Presentation Grant, The Japan Society for Medieval English Studies, 2008
Further links
For the full list of her works: https://researchmap.jp/read0211736?lang=en
