Creaser, Professor John

Job Title: Emeritus Fellow
College: Mansfield
Period/ Subject: Early Modern

Email address: john.creaser@ell.ox.ac.uk

Research Interests:

Renaissance poetry and drama, especially Milton, Jonson, Herrick, Marvell; Poetics; Keats and T. S. Eliot.

Recent Publications:

‘“As one scap’t strangely from Captivity”: Marvell and Existential Liberty’, pp. 145-72 in: Marvell and Liberty, ed. W. Chernaik and M. Dzelzainis (Macmillan, 1999).

‘Prosodic Style and Conceptions of Liberty in Milton and Marvell’, Milton Quarterly, 34 (2000), 1-13.

‘“Through mazes running”: Rhythmic Verve in Milton’s L’Allegro and Il Penseroso’, Review of English Studies, 52 (2001), 376-410.

‘Forms of Confusion’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean Comedy, ed. A. Leggatt (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 81-101.

‘Prosody and Liberty in Milton and Marvell’, in Milton and the Terms of Liberty, ed. G. Parry and J. Raymond (Brewer, 2002), 37-55 [a revision of the article in Milton Quarterly, 2000]. [This book was awarded the Irene Samuel Prize by the Milton Society of America for the best collection of Milton studies published in 2002.]

‘Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair and Bancroft’s Dangerous Positions’, Review of English Studies, 57 (2006), 176-84.

‘Herrick at Play’, Essays in Criticism, 56 (2006), 324-50.

‘“Service is perfect freedom”: Paradox and Prosodic Style in Paradise Lost’, Review of English Studies, 58 (2007), 268-315. [This was awarded the James Holly Hanford Prize by the Milton Society of America for the most distinguished essay on Milton published in 2007.]

‘“Fear of Change”: Closed Minds and Open Forms in Milton’, Milton Quarterly 42 (2008), 161-82.

‘“Times trans-shifting”: Chronology and the Misshaping of Herrick’, English Literary Renaissance, 39 (2009), 163-96. [Awarded the ELR prize for the best essay published there in 2009.]

‘“A mind of most exceptional energy”: Verse Rhythm in Paradise Lost’, in Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Milton (Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 462-79. [This book was awarded the Irene Samuel Prize by the Milton Society of America for the best collection of Milton studies published in 2009.]

‘Verse and Rhyme’, in Milton in Context, ed. Stephen B. Dobranski (Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 105-15. [Awarded the Irene Samuel Prize by the Milton Society of America for the best collection of Milton studies published in 2010.]

‘Editing Lycidas: the Authority of Minutiae’, plus a textual edition of the poem, Milton Quarterly 44 (2010), 73-121.

‘“Jocond his muse was”: Celebration and Virtuosity in Herrick’, Community and Conviviality in the Work of Robert Herrick, ed. T. Cain and R. Connolly (Oxford University Press, 2011), 39-64

Forthcoming in 2012:

An edition of Bartholomew Fair for The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, gen. eds. D. Bevington, M. Butler, and I. Donaldson (Cambridge University Press).

‘The Original Sabrina?’, Milton Quarterly.

Entry on ‘Prosody’ in the Yale Encyclopedia of Milton, ed. T. Corns.

Other Information:

Prof. Creaser retired from teaching in 2002 as Hildred Carlile Professor of English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, having formerly been English Fellow and Vice-Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford. In ‘retirement’ he has returned to Mansfield, initially as a Senior Research Fellow, and now as an Emeritus Fellow. Until 2008 he was also for many years Executive Secretary of the Malone Society, and he remains on the Council of the Society.

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