R Howard Bloch

Has written on a variety of topics in and around medieval literature and social history, legal, economic, familial, and political institutions, humor and the fabliaux, gender and the rise of Western romantic love and the history of the discipline of Medieval Studies. Bloch holds a medal from the Collège de France, is an officer in the Order of Arts and Letters, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society.  He is currently completing a book on Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Un coup de Dés jamais n’abolira le Hasard.” 

Book publications include:

Medieval French Literature and Law (1977).

Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (1983; paperback edition 1986).

Etymologie et Généalogie: une anthropologie littéraire du moyen âge français (1988).

The Scandal of the Fabliaux (1986).

Moses in the Promised Land, a novel (1988).

Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (1991).

God’s Plagiarist: Being an Account of the Fabulous Industry and Irregular Commerce of the Abbé Migne (1994).

Le Plagiare de Dieu (1996). 

The Anonymous Marie de France, (2003).

Il Plagiario di Dio (2003).

A Needle in the Right Hand of God: The Norman Conquest of 1066 and the Making and Meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry (2006).

One toss of the Dice: The Incredible Story of How a Poem Made us Modern, forthcoming W. W. Norton.