Brenda Wang

My work focuses on the intersections of language and epistemology in Middle English literature. I am interested in what we now call "common sense," which is comprised of information and modes of reasoning that people take for granted without question or extended justification. While Middle English authors might not have used the term "common sense" to denote this same idea, I wish to examine moments in both poetic and prose works where characters make use of knowledge or habits of thinking that are assumed to be universal. I will explore how the ways in which characters understood these assumptions either improved or weakened their communication. I will be focusing particularly on the tension between human and situational flexibility (when characters prioritize negotiation and understand cognitive processes as responses to fluid situations that feature human agents as opposed to disembodied concepts, thereby emphasizing personal connections as the foundation of epistemological norms) and the authority of "correct" information (where intellectual content is treated an an immutable truth upon which every rational person should agree, thereby emphasizing predetermined knowledge-models as the foundation of personal connections). I wish to consider the degrees to which common sense is born out of communication and communication is made possible by common sense.