Nicholas Watson (academic)

Nicholas Watson is an English-Canadian medievalist, literary critic, religious historian, and author.

[3] After an undergraduate education at the University of Cambridge and graduate work with Vincent Gillespie at Oxford, he began his scholarly career with a 1987 dissertation at the University of Toronto on the Yorkshire hermit Richard Rolle.

[4] Watson has written on vernacularity, gender, religious censorship, ritual magic, and mystical literature; he has also edited and translated important works from medieval Latin and Middle English.

He is credited with introducing the concept of "vernacular theology" to literary and religious studies.

[5] His scholarship has explored figures such as Julian of Norwich, William Langland, Marguerite Porete, Geoffrey Chaucer, John of Morigny, Richard Rolle, the Pearl Poet, and Archbishop Thomas Arundel.