Associate
Professor
The
poetry of the English romantic poets, in particular of Shelley
and Wordsworth, is my central professional concern. The study
of these poets has led me both backward and forward in time, backward
through the centuries-long, polyglot tradition of Western poetry
that they come out of and profoundly alter, and forward in time
to such diverse continuers of their way with words as Seamus Heaney,
Robert Frost, and Adrienne Rich. Besides undergraduate
and graduate courses in my specialty, I teach a wide variety of
courses: Introduction to Poetry; Shakespeare; American Literature;
the Bible. My Rousseau in England: the Context for
Shelley's Critique of the Enlightenment (California 1979)
closes with a reading of one of Shelley's major poems that would
have it enacting a poet's way of knowing the world that was even
then, in 1822, being repressed and marginalized by the dominant
intellectual and epistemological assumptions of modern Western
culture. Such philosophical preoccupations have led me to a cross-disciplinary
engagement with the "ordinary language" philosophy practised
in various ways by John Austin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Stanley
Cavell. This lateral move into philosophy has eventuated
in several articles, one of which is reprinted in Ordinary
Language Criticism (Northwestern 2003).
As I write (Fall 2003) I am nearing completion
of a book on Shelley's poetry, tentatively entitled The Constitution
of Shelley's Writing, and totally rethought and revised in
view of what I have learned of language and thought from these
philosophers. In the classroom, I gladly look for and teach
both the clarity and the mystery of language, both its trenchant
force and its subtle graces. I look for and teach these qualities
as they are to be found not only in what I ask my students to
read but also in what I require them to write.
Teaching Fields
- English Literature of the Romantic Period
- Nineteenth Century English Literature
Office
Location & Contact
Office
Hours
- SPRING 2008
- MW 11:30 - 1:00 and by appt
Teaching
Schedule
SPRING 2008
- 006/1001 MWF 9:00
- 160/1001 MWF 10:00
Research Interests
Selected Publications
Honors/Awards
