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Ed
Block Jr.
Professor
Director of Graduate
Studies
 I
came to Marquette as a Victorianist and reader-response critic.
My early research and publication was on Victorian periodical
literature and the intersection of Victorian science, literature
and values. My interest in Robert Louis Stevenson and Gothic literature
in the late nineteenth century yielded Rituals of Dis-Integration
(1993) as well as articles in Victorian Studies and elsewhere.
I have taught all the British survey courses
and individual author courses on John Henry Newman as well as
Hopkins and Hardy. My work on Newman culminated in a speakers'
program and a collection of critical essays (1992) derived from
it. From reader-response I moved to Gadamerian hermeneutical
criticism and — most recently — the theo-dramatic
theory of the late Swiss humanist and theologian, Hans
Urs von Balthasar.
In the department I have taught the graduate
history of criticism as well as the undergraduate course in literary
criticism. Since beginning work on Balthasar, my research and
teaching interests have shifted to drama.
In the early 90s I contributed to and guest-edited
issues of Renascence: Essays on Values and Literature,
the scholarly journal that has been published at Marquette for
over fifty years. For Renascence I interviewed novelist Larry
Woiwode and contributed essays on Hans-Georg Gadamer and G. K.
Chesterton. Since 1995 I have edited the journal. That has made
me, perforce, a generalist in my tastes, and increasingly committed
to the relation of literature to spirituality, religion, and belief.
Under my editorship Renascence has done special issues
on Denise Levertov, Balthasar, Rene Girard, Graham Greene, and
Gabriel Marcel. I have interviewed Minnesota novelist Jon Hassler
as well as Denise Levertov
Teaching Fields
- Drama
- Critical Theory
- Victorian Literature
Office
Location & Contact
Office
Hours
Teaching
Schedule
Research Interests
- Denise Levertov and Gerard Manley Hopkins
- The fiction of Jon Hassler
- Hans Urs von Balthasar
- Drama, Poetry, Victorian literature
Selected Publications
- "Hans Urs von Balthasar and Some Contemporary Catholic Writers." LOGOS, Fall, 2007.
- "G. K. Chesteron's Orthodoxy as Intellectual Autobiography." G.K. Chesterton: Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom, 2006. (Reprint).
- Glory, Grace, and Culture: The Works of Hans Urs von Balthasar. Paulist Press, 2005.
- "The Plays of Peter Shaffer and the Mimetic Theory of René Girard." Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Fall, 2004.
- Rituals of Dis-Integration: Romance and Madness in the Victorian Psychomythic Tale, 1993.
- Critical Essays on John Henry Newman. University of Victoria, 1992.
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Honors/Awards
- Editor, Renascence 1995-present
- Invited presenter for week-long seminar, “Substantially Catholic,” Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY, June, 2008
- Mentor, Collegium: Colloquy on Religion and the Intellectual Life, 1995, 2000, 2003
- Marquette Summer Faculty Fellowships
- NEH Summer Fellowships
- Fulbright Fellowship to West Germany, 1972-73
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