Conrad van Dyk

I specialize in Middle English literature and legal history. My book John Gower and the Limits of the Law (Boydell and Brewer, 2013) deals with the intersection of law and literature in the fourteenth century, particularly in the works of John Gower. More recent articles explore such legal maxims as necessity knows no law as well as the theory of literature and law. I have also made a major contribution to the Online Gower Bibliography (160+ entries), and in 2019 I received the John Hurt Fisher Prize for my contributions to Gower studies. My current research has increasingly focused on twentieth-century fiction, particularly the works of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis.

I am also the creator of the online writing guide The Nature of Writing, which provides hundreds of videos, exercises, and tutorials on all aspects of academic writing.

In 2020, I received the Judith C. Meier Teaching Award for my contributions to teaching at Concordia. I have taught a broad range of subjects, including medieval literature, first year composition, children’s literature, critical theory, and contemporary British literature. I am usually happy to supervise an Independent Study (ENG 480) in these areas.

Education

• SSHRC Post-Doctoral Fellow, 2008, Cornell University
• PhD, English, 2007, University of Western Ontario
• MA, English, 2003, University of Western Ontario
• BA, English, 2002, University of the Fraser Valley

Select Publications

van Dyk, Conrad. The Nature of Writing. http://www.natureofwriting.com/.

van Dijk, Conrad. “A Question of Spiritual Atmosphere”: The Mystical Semiotics of G. K. Chesterton’s The Club of Queer Trades.” Christianity & Literature, forthcoming.

– – –. “Chesterton’s Duel with Nietzsche in The Ball and the Cross.” Religion & Literature 56.1, forthcoming.

– – –. “‘Some Allegoric Figure of Labour’: Chesterton’s Response to Marxism in The Man Who Was Thursday,” The Chesterton Review, forthcoming (spring, 2025).

– – –. “Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan and the Allegory of Law.” Literature and the Legal Imaginary: Knowing Justice, vol. 4 of Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, edited by Subha Mukherji and Dunstan Roberts, Palgrave Macmillan, 2025, pp. 241-61.

– – –. “Is Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ an Anti-Elegy? A Comparison with Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.’” The Explicator 82.1, 2024, pp. 6-9.

– – –. “Survival or Revival? C. S. Lewis’ Medievalism in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Journal of Inklings Studies 13.2, 2023, pp. 180-201.

2023 “Decrees, Book of (Decretum).” The Chaucer Encyclopedia, edited by Richard Newhauser, Vincent Gillespie, Jessica Rosenfeld, and Katie Walter. Wiley Blackwell, 2023.

– – –.  “John Gower and the Law: Legal Theory and Practice.” The Ashgate Research Companion to John Gower, edited by Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, Routledge, 2017, pp. 75-87.

– – –.  “‘Nede hath no law’: The State of Exception in Gower and Langland.” Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, vol. 2, no. 2, 2015, article 2. http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/accessus/vol2/iss2/2.

– – –.  John Gower and the Limits of the Law. Boydell and Brewer, 2013.

– – –. “Vengeance and the Legal Person: John Gower’s Tale of Orestes.” Theorizing Legal Personhood in Late Medieval England, edited by Andreea Boboc, Brill, 2015, pp. 119-41.

– – –. “Giving each his due”: Gower, Langland, and the Question of Equity.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, vol. 108, no. 3, 2009, pp. 310-35.