Carl G. Martin
- Associate Professor of English
About
Carl Grey Martin joined the English faculty at Norwich in 2010. He specializes in early English language and literature.
Martin, born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to immigrant parents, has always been interested in the stories — and histories — of earlier times and distant places. He regularly teaches the History of the English Language and a course on J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as film studies, science fiction, and premodern world literature.
His scholarship, published in journals such as The Chaucer Review and Studies in Philology, focuses on class, violence, and ideology in 15th- and 16th-century texts. He tries to explore — and expose — the literary and cultural tools that the European aristocracy used to rationalize its violence and material power, which perpetuated class-based injustices.
In 2025, Martin was a Clare Hall Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, where he developed his current book project on Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. In 2016, he enjoyed a month’s residency as a Mayers Fellow at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, to study Thomas Hoccleve’s manuscripts. Martin has received the Norwich University Award for Excellence in Research several times.
Since 2023, Martin has proudly served as the Faculty Senate chair.
Education
Ph.D. English, Tufts University
M.Lit. English, University of Aberdeen
B.A. English, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Courses Taught
EN 370 Discovering Tolkien
EN 350 History of the English Language
EN 225 Survey of British Literature I
EN 222 Sacred Texts
Publications
Recent Publications
Martin, Carl Grey. “The Cloak and the Clog: Tudor Portraiture and Sir Thomas Wyatt’s First Satire.” Studies in Philology, vol. 121, no. 1, 2024, pp. 28–57.
“The Cipher of Chivalry: Violence as Courtly Play in the World of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd ed., edited by Laura L. Howes. W. W. Norton, 2022, pp. 192–209.
“In Agincourt’s Shadow: Hoccleve’s ‘Balade au … compagnie du Iarter’ and the Domestication of Henry V.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, vol. 41, 2019, pp. 183–219.