School of Modern Languages & Cultures

Dr Laura Martin

  • Honorary Senior Research Fellow (School of Modern Languages & Cultures)

email: Laura.Martin@glasgow.ac.uk

R310A Level 3, Comparative Literature, Hetherington Building, Glasgow G12 8QQ

Import to contacts

ORCID iDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259

Biography

I have retired after 30 years as a Lecturer in German and then Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature.  I can take on PhD supervisions as second or third supervisor on topics that have some close overlap with my research interests.

I am now a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst (qualified with The Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists, London) with a private practice in Glasgow.

I am also an occasional teller of myths and folk or fairy tales, with a focus on  German and Celtic tales. Some of my teachers for the latter are Martin Shaw (School of Myth)  and Daniel Allison (House of Legends).

Research interests

Research interests:

German and English-language Literature of the 18th-20th centuries, especially the Romantic Era, short narratives, and Märchen.

Analytical Psychology (Jungian psychology and psychotherapy/analysis)

Myth, Fairy Tales, 'Magical Narratives' of all sorts.

I have published on Benedikte Naubert, Goethe, Kleist, Mörike, Büchner, CG Jung, WG Sebald; Hawthorne, Henry James, Dorothy L Sayers.

I have taught topics across a very broad spectrum of mostly German and English-language literature, literary and narrative theories, and more.

I have been especially influenced in recent years by the work of Iain McGilchrist (The Master and His Emissary, and The Matter with Things) as well as Susan Rowland (The Eco-Critical Psyche).

Favourite authors, in no particular order:

Le Guin, Tolkien, Sayers, Toni Morrison, Shirley Jackson, Novalis, Kleist, Büchner, Wordsworth, Kafka.

My current research focuses on the enigmatic nature of our existence in 'Two Worlds'--so-called 'real' and imaginary, left-brain-right brain (a la McGilchrist), relative and ultimate reality (a la Buddism), this world and faerie, etc. 

 

 

Publications

List by: Type | Date

Jump to: 2021 | 2016 | 2014 | 2011 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1993
Number of items: 25.

2021

Büchner, Georg, Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 and Mackendrick, John (Eds.) (2021) Woyzeck. Series: Student editions. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: London ; New York. ISBN 9781350108141

2016

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2016) Fantastical conversations with the other in the self: Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) and her Peter Wimsey as Animus. University of Toronto Quarterly, 85(2), pp. 25-46.

2014

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2014) Reading the individual: the ethics of narration in the works of W. G. Sebald as an example for comparative literature. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(1), pp. 29-47. (doi: 10.3366/ccs.2014.0112)

2011

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2011) The German enlightenment and romantic Kunstmaerchen as anti-Maerchen. In: McAra, Catriona and Calvin, David (eds.) Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 18-36. ISBN 9781443828697

2008

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Anti-Semitism. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334429

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Kind and unkind girls. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn. ISBN 9780313334412

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Mother Holle. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Musaeus. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., USA. ISBN 9780313334412

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Musäus, Johann Karl August (1735-87). In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Novella. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Violence. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., USA. ISBN 9780313334412

2007

Martin, L. (2007) Die neue volksmarchen der Deutschen: a new twist on an old plot? The Rubezahl legend in Benedikte Naubert (1756-1819) and Johann Karl August Musaus (1735-87). In: Gooze, M.E. (ed.) Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Germany. Series: North American studies in 19th-century German literature (40). Peter Lang: Oxford, UK, pp. 73-92. ISBN 9783039110186

2006

Martin, L. (2006) Benedikte Nauberts Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen: Strukturen des Wandels. Konigshausen & Neumann. ISBN 3826034163

Martin, L. (2006) The Jew in the thornbush: German fairy tales and anti-semitism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Musaus, Naubert and the Grimms'. Modern Language Review, pp. 123-141.

2005

Martin, L. (2005) Narrative Strategies in Benedikte Naubert's Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen. In: Borders and Margins - Essays on German Literature. Series: Scottish papers in Germanic Studies (12). Glasgow: French and German Publications: Glasgow, pp. 25-51. ISBN 0907409121

2004

Colvin, Sarah, Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259, Phipps, Alison ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5958-1207 and Reisenberger, Christl (Eds.) (2004) Myth and Mythmaking. Series: German life and letters. Blackwell.

2003

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2003) The Rubezahl Legend in Benedikte Naubert and Johann Karl August Musäus. Marvels and Tales, 17(2), p. 197. (doi: 10.1353/mat.2003.0032)

2001

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (Ed.) (2001) Harmony in Discord: German Women Writers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Peter Lang: Oxford, UK. ISBN 9783906766881

2000

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2000) The feminine voice and the eternal verities: Goethe's Wanderjahre and its critics. In: Reed, T.J., Swales, M. and Adler, J.D. (eds.) Goethe at 250: London Symposium. Series: Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies (75). Iudicium: Munich, Germany, pp. 67-84. ISBN 9783891290491

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2000) Narrative Feminine Identity and the Appearance of Woman in Some of the Shorter Fiction of Goethe, Kleist, Hawthorne and James. Series: Women's studies (23). E. Mellen Press: Lewiston, N.Y., USA. ISBN 9780773478091

1999

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1999) Über die Lauheit und das Lachen der Lau. Zu Mörikes Historie aus psychoanalytischer und feministischer Sicht. In: Wierlacher, Alois (ed.) Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Iudicium Verlag: Munich, pp. 398-408.

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1999) Die Marquise von O… and The Scarlet Letter: a study in vicarious gender-jumping. In: Saul, Nicholas, Steuer, Daniel, Mobus, Frank and Illner, Birgit (eds.) Schwellen: Germanistische Erkundungen einer Metapher. Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg, pp. 251-264. ISBN 9783826015526

1998

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1998) Loss of memory, estrangement from the Body: Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Marquise von O…. In: Talmor, Sascha and Brinkhuis, Frank (eds.) Memory, History and Critique: European Identity at the Millennium. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, 19-24 Aug 1996, Utrecht, The Netherlands. ISSEI/University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, pp. 1-9. ISBN 9789073022119

1997

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1997) 'Schlechtes mensch/gutes opfer': the role of Marie in Georg Büchner's Woyzeck. German Life and Letters, 50(4), pp. 429-444. (doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0483.1997.tb01703.x)

1993

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1993) Who’s the fool now? A study of Goethe’s novella "Die pilgernde Törin" from his novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. German Quarterly, 66(4), pp. 431-450. (doi: 10.2307/407761)

This list was generated on Tue Oct 20 18:19:13 2026 BST.
Jump to: Articles | Books | Book Sections | Edited Books
Number of items: 25.

Articles

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2016) Fantastical conversations with the other in the self: Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) and her Peter Wimsey as Animus. University of Toronto Quarterly, 85(2), pp. 25-46.

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2014) Reading the individual: the ethics of narration in the works of W. G. Sebald as an example for comparative literature. Comparative Critical Studies, 11(1), pp. 29-47. (doi: 10.3366/ccs.2014.0112)

Martin, L. (2006) The Jew in the thornbush: German fairy tales and anti-semitism in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: Musaus, Naubert and the Grimms'. Modern Language Review, pp. 123-141.

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2003) The Rubezahl Legend in Benedikte Naubert and Johann Karl August Musäus. Marvels and Tales, 17(2), p. 197. (doi: 10.1353/mat.2003.0032)

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1997) 'Schlechtes mensch/gutes opfer': the role of Marie in Georg Büchner's Woyzeck. German Life and Letters, 50(4), pp. 429-444. (doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0483.1997.tb01703.x)

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1993) Who’s the fool now? A study of Goethe’s novella "Die pilgernde Törin" from his novel Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre. German Quarterly, 66(4), pp. 431-450. (doi: 10.2307/407761)

Books

Martin, L. (2006) Benedikte Nauberts Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen: Strukturen des Wandels. Konigshausen & Neumann. ISBN 3826034163

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2000) Narrative Feminine Identity and the Appearance of Woman in Some of the Shorter Fiction of Goethe, Kleist, Hawthorne and James. Series: Women's studies (23). E. Mellen Press: Lewiston, N.Y., USA. ISBN 9780773478091

Book Sections

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2011) The German enlightenment and romantic Kunstmaerchen as anti-Maerchen. In: McAra, Catriona and Calvin, David (eds.) Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 18-36. ISBN 9781443828697

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Anti-Semitism. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334429

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Kind and unkind girls. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn. ISBN 9780313334412

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Mother Holle. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Musaeus. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., USA. ISBN 9780313334412

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Musäus, Johann Karl August (1735-87). In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Novella. In: Haase, D. (ed.) The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313334436

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2008) Violence. In: Haase, D. (ed.) Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales. Greenwood Press: Westport, Conn., USA. ISBN 9780313334412

Martin, L. (2007) Die neue volksmarchen der Deutschen: a new twist on an old plot? The Rubezahl legend in Benedikte Naubert (1756-1819) and Johann Karl August Musaus (1735-87). In: Gooze, M.E. (ed.) Challenging Separate Spheres: Female Bildung in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Germany. Series: North American studies in 19th-century German literature (40). Peter Lang: Oxford, UK, pp. 73-92. ISBN 9783039110186

Martin, L. (2005) Narrative Strategies in Benedikte Naubert's Neue Volksmarchen der Deutschen. In: Borders and Margins - Essays on German Literature. Series: Scottish papers in Germanic Studies (12). Glasgow: French and German Publications: Glasgow, pp. 25-51. ISBN 0907409121

Martin, L. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (2000) The feminine voice and the eternal verities: Goethe's Wanderjahre and its critics. In: Reed, T.J., Swales, M. and Adler, J.D. (eds.) Goethe at 250: London Symposium. Series: Publications of the Institute of Germanic Studies (75). Iudicium: Munich, Germany, pp. 67-84. ISBN 9783891290491

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1999) Über die Lauheit und das Lachen der Lau. Zu Mörikes Historie aus psychoanalytischer und feministischer Sicht. In: Wierlacher, Alois (ed.) Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache. Iudicium Verlag: Munich, pp. 398-408.

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1999) Die Marquise von O… and The Scarlet Letter: a study in vicarious gender-jumping. In: Saul, Nicholas, Steuer, Daniel, Mobus, Frank and Illner, Birgit (eds.) Schwellen: Germanistische Erkundungen einer Metapher. Königshausen & Neumann: Würzburg, pp. 251-264. ISBN 9783826015526

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (1998) Loss of memory, estrangement from the Body: Heinrich von Kleist’s Die Marquise von O…. In: Talmor, Sascha and Brinkhuis, Frank (eds.) Memory, History and Critique: European Identity at the Millennium. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, 19-24 Aug 1996, Utrecht, The Netherlands. ISSEI/University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, pp. 1-9. ISBN 9789073022119

Edited Books

Büchner, Georg, Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 and Mackendrick, John (Eds.) (2021) Woyzeck. Series: Student editions. Bloomsbury Methuen Drama: London ; New York. ISBN 9781350108141

Colvin, Sarah, Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259, Phipps, Alison ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5958-1207 and Reisenberger, Christl (Eds.) (2004) Myth and Mythmaking. Series: German life and letters. Blackwell.

Martin, Laura ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8656-7259 (Ed.) (2001) Harmony in Discord: German Women Writers in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Peter Lang: Oxford, UK. ISBN 9783906766881

This list was generated on Tue Oct 20 18:19:13 2026 BST.

Supervision

Areas of supervision:

I welcome proposals for research topics for MPhil (Research) or PhD degrees in any of the following areas.  Please note that as I am retired and have honorary status, I cannot function as first supervisor, but only as second or even third.

  • CG Jung, and Jungian interpretations of oral or written literature
  • The History of the Fairy Tale
  • Comparative Interpretations of Fairy Tales
  • The Novella
  • Magical Narratives--
    • Imagination/Fantasy
    • The Two Worlds (Conscious/Unconscious; Left-brain/Right-brain; Inner/Outer; Faerie/Reality...)
  • The Fantastic in Literature
  • German, British and American Romanticisms
  • German Authors: Naubert, Goethe, Kleist, ETA Hoffmann, Kafka
  • Women Writers of the 18th/19th Centuries
  • The late 18th-century and 19th-century in German, American and British literature

I have supervised and co-supervised and examined a number of Honours and MLitt Dissertations as well as several PhDs on 19th- and 20th-century topics, including these topics:

  • The 'Other' in the Works of JRR Tolkien
  • Jung, McGilchrist and Selected Anglophone Post-postmodern Novels
  • The Eco-Critical Psyche and Malay Folklore 
  • Towards an Anthropology of Literature: the Magic of Hybrid Fictions
  • Attitudes Magic and Fantasy in Modern Francophone and Anglophone Literary Fairy Tales
  • A Collection of Modern Fairy Tales (a creative writing project)
  • Failed Utopias: Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven and the Strugatsky Brothers’ The Roadside Picnic
  • Infernal Journeys into the Unconscious: a Comparative Study of Angela Carter, Jorge Luis Borges and Dante Alighieri
  • A Comparative Study of The Representations of The Chinese Legend of Mulan Across Chinese and American Literature and Films
  • Subverting the Roles: Hero, Heroine and Villain in Fairy Tales for Young Adults by Cornelia Funke and Edith Patou
  • The Presentation of Mothers in Novels by Women Writers of German Speaking Countries in the 1970s
  • Tales of Curiosity and the Fulfilment of the Self in the Märchen of the Grimms and Their Contemporaries
  • Body, Mind and Power in Nineteenth-Century German Literature
  • Political Melancholy in Early Nineteenth-Century Literature

Teaching

Teaching:

I have taught across the Comparative Literature Programme, from First Year to Honours. Authors and topics that I teach or have taught range from Sophocles to Virginia Woolf, the Brothers Grimm, Toni Morrison, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Paul Celan, William Faulkner, W.G. Sebald, German Romantic Poetry, Heinrich von Kleist, German Realism, The Brothers Grimm and the European Fairy Tale, German Women Writers in the Age of Goethe, Heroic Men, Heroic Women, Exploring Identity, Crossing Borders, Narratives of Adultery, and Constructing the Literary Self. I organised and was for  a time the main contributor on the two Honours Core Courses in Comparative Literature: ‘Theories of Reading’ and ‘Intercultural Readings’, which are Honours-level lectures on 20th and 21st-century theoretical approaches to literature and culture. Here I have taught on the New Criticism, Reader Response, Sigmund Freud and Literature, CG Jung and Literature, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, David Damrosch and more.

At postgraduate level I have offered seminars on Gender Studies, French Feminism (Cixous and Kristeva), Narrative Theories, Comparative Literature as a discipline, CG Jung and literature, Psychoanalysis and Literature, German and English Romantic Poetry, the Bildungsroman, Canons and Canon Formation, and more. 

I set up, convened and was for a time the main teacher on the MLitt in Comparative Literature including seminars on:  The History of Comparative Literature; Northrup Frye; Feminism and Eco-Criticism (theory and practice).

Additional information

BIOGRAPHY

Dr Laura  Martin came to the University of Glasgow in 1995 as a Lecturer in German, moving to Comparative Literature, where she was Senior Lecturer, from 2005-2025. She is now a retired Honorary member of staff.

In addition to her university work, Laura is trained with the Independent Group of Analysical Psycholologists in London to become a Jungian psychotherapist in 2021. She is a keen amateur singer and has sung with the the University's Chapel Choir, Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus and Edinburgh Festival Chorus in the past. She is also a storyteller, focusing on German and Celtic tales at present.

Laura Martin was awarded a Ph.D. from the Institute of Liberal Arts at Emory University in 1996 for her comparative study of Goethe, Kleist, Hawthorne and James.  Before coming to Glasgow, Laura was a Lektorin at the University of Regensburg.  


Dr Laura Martin