Thomas Pettitt Associate Professor Department of English University of Southern Denmark Campusvej 55 DK-5230 Odense M Tel: +45 6550 2128 Fax: +45 6593 0490 E-mail: pettitt@litcul.sdu.dk

Thomas Pettitt (Ph.d., Odense University, 1996) received his higher education (B.A.; M.A) at the University of Wales, and has been on the staff of the English Department at Odense University since 1969 (Associate Professor since 1975). He teaches English literary and cultural history in the late-medieval and early-modern periods (with regular advanced seminars on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Theatre), and Folklore. His research (conducted under the auspices of the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Institute for Literature, Culture and Media) focusses on tradition-borne texts and performances such as ballads, folksongs, legends, customs and folk drama. These traditions are studied both as cultural productions in their own right, with a distinct, ‘vernacular’, aesthetic, and in relation to the conventional literary and cultural history of the late-medieval and early-modern periods. In addition folkloristic methodologies are applied experimentally to literary material, for example in identifying oral features in Elizabethan dramatic texts. Results of this research have been published in academic journals such as Folklore, Journal of American Folklore, Renaissance Drama, European Medieval Theatre, Comparative Drama, Medieval English Theatre,and The English Folk Music Journal, as well as in a number of conference proceedings.