Herin Iole Han

My doctoral thesis considers how complaint—as a pervasive literary mode of the English Renaissance for the expression of religious, political, or erotic lamentation—diverged from its classical and medieval precedents and flourished as a legally inflected rhetorical mode. In particular, I focus on the literature of complaint's imitative divergence from the Ovidian model of female-voiced lament in response to contemporary changes in the legal culture and language of complaint.
 
My research is supported by a Clarendon Fund Scholarship, the AHRC Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Partnership, and a Magdalen College Scholarship. Before beginning my DPhil, I completed the M.St. English (1550-1700) at Merton College, Oxford, and a BA in English Literature at University College London.