Thesis title: The art of ease in English poetry
Supervisor: Professor Freya Johnston
Doctoral research: I am working on 'ease' in literature from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, with a focus on poetry. My research is funded by an AHRC OOC-DTP studentship. Before starting the DPhil, I read for a BA in English at St Anne's College, and for an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.
Research interests: Restoration, eighteenth century, and Romantic period literature; poetry; style; comedy and satire; close reading; the history of words; the history and language of literary criticism. Authors of particular interest include Dryden, Rochester, Prior, Pope, Sterne, Johnson, Churchill, Cowper, Austen, and Peacock.
Teaching: I am presently a Lecturer at Balliol College, where I am teaching Prelims 1b and FHS 5.
Publications
'Churchill's Nervousness', Essays in Criticism, 72 (2022), pp. 463-77.
'The Eighteenth Century (1700-1780): 1. General and Prose', The Year's Work in English Studies, 102 (2023), pp. 646-72.
Conference papers
'What is "easy writing"?', 53rd Annual BSECS Conference, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 4th January 2024.
'Pope's Contempt', The Pleasures of Hating, 1660-1830, Trinity College, Cambridge, 18th November 2023.
'Churchill among the Poets', Influence: 50 Years On, Magdalen College, Oxford, 25th September 2023.
'Cowper's Pauses', Oxford English Graduate Conference, 2nd June 2023.