Gwenyth E. Hood

Gwenyth Hood was born in White Plains, NY, but moved with her family to Brandon, Vermont at the age of seven. As little girl, she wanted to be a veterinarian and she still loves animals; at various times, she has kept dogs, cats, ducks, and tropical fish. She also developed a love of reading and writing at an early age, discovering some favorite authors—Rudyard Kipling, Shakespeare, and J. R. R. Tolkien, more or less in that order, and then Dante. Some years later, Gwenyth earned her B. A. in 1977 at Wellesley College (a double major in Medieval-Renaissance Studies and Latin), and went on to study Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), where she received her PH. D. in 1984.

In 1982, Gwenyth published her first novel, -The Coming of the Demons- (William Morrow). It involves a futuristic people, the Pelezitereans, who are seeking a new planet, having left their previous home many generations before in the midst of a cataclysm. At the beginning of the book, they blunder into our own Medieval Italy in 1268, and accidentally interrupt the execution of young King Conradin, whose death is mentioned with disapproval in Dante’s Purgatorio (20.68). It is not easy for them to escape the ensuing complications.

Some years later, while doing further research on the Empress Constance, mother of Frederick II of Hohenstaufen and great-grandmother to Conradin, Gwenyth became interested in the Latin verse chronicle of Pietro da Eboli, called -Liber ad Honorem Augusti-, or -Book in Honor of Augustus-, Among other things, the poem, with many illustrations, shows Constance in action at a difficult point in her life. At the time, there was no English translation. Therefore, Gwenyth’s translation, with the Latin published on opposite pages and the illustrations in black and white, was published in 2012, by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Gwenyth’s latest book, a Jungian analytical approach to Dante, -Dante’s Dream-, was published in July 2021, by MIP/ De Gruyter Press. Among other things, it explores the idea that Dante’s great poem may have been inspired by a dream on the date clearly indicated within the poem, and considers how that hypothesis would cause us to understand the work differently.

At Marshall University, where Gwenyth Hood has been since 1989 (after a previous one year position from 1985-86), she has taught English courses in Composition, Creative Writing, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Medieval Literature, and sometimes Dante.