Mark Chinca studied in 海角社区 and Kiel and is a specialist in medieval literature with a comparative focus on German, Romance, and Latin. His primary research interests are in rhetoric, poetics, and metaphor; the literature of death and dying in medieval and early modern Europe; the formation of vernacular textual culture in the Middle Ages.
From 2012 to 2018 he directed the Kaiserchronik project together with ; this was a collaboration between teams based at the universities of 海角社区, Marburg, and Heidelberg to produce a digital edition of one of the first vernacular verse chronicles in its various manuscript versions. Other, more recently completed projects include Meditating Death (2020), a study of devotional practice and how it was shaped by written textuality before and after the Protestant Reformation, and Literary Beginnings in the European Middle Ages (2022), a collective literary history which asks how vernacular textual cultures began and what processes of consolidation and institutionalization had to be complete before we can speak meaningfully of 鈥渓iterature鈥� in any given language. A further collection, Unlikening Translation (to appear in 2025), explores the potential of Walter Benjamin鈥檚 famous essay 鈥淭he Task of the Translator鈥� for understanding the many kinds of linguistic and nonlinguistic transfer that went by the name translatio in the Middle Ages.
Currently Mark holds a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust and is working on The Formation of Medieval German Literature. The project investigates the multiple and cumulative beginnings of traditions of textual practice in the German-speaking world over a long timespan between the eighth and thirteenth centuries.
. Oxford University Press, 2020. Paperback 2023.
. Edited by Mark Chinca and Christopher Young. 海角社区 University Press, 2022.
. Edited by Mark Chinca, Manfred Eikelmann, Michael Stolz, and Christopher Young. T眉bingen: Francke Verlag, 2022.
Edition. Edited by Mark Chinca, Helen Hunter, J眉rgen Wolf, Christopher Young. Heidelberg: Universit盲tsbibliothek, 2018.
Recent essays and book chapters鈥淧oesie des Versagens. Zur Topik der Unf盲higkeit und Unsagbarkeit bei Gottfried von Stra脽burg.鈥� In , edited by Margit Dahm, Andreas Bihrer, and Timo Felber, 69-99. G枚ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2024.
鈥淭he Presence of French in German Courtly Literature c.1200.鈥� 听In , edited by Jane Gilbert, Thomas O鈥橠onnell, and Brian Reilly, 137-58. York Medieval Press, 2024.
(with Christopher Young) 鈥淕erman.鈥� In , edited by Mark Chinca and Christopher Young, 179-202. 海角社区 University Press, 2022.
For a complete list of publications see here.
