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Why, in 1882, did Harper’s Weekly publish a cartoon by Thomas Nast depicting Oscar Wilde as a mushroom? The question is one that marks the crucial influence of British decadence on the shape of modern ecological thought. The spores of this story appear as early as 1871, when critic Thomas Maitland (aka Robert Buchanan) turned […]
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Since at least the 1980’s, any university student who wanted to learn about Freud or psychoanalysis would not be directed to departments of psychology, nor to psychiatry, but would instead be ushered to the English department. The irony of this circumstance is, of course, that such guidance returns the student to the origins of psychoanalysis. […]
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Arguably, Daniel Defoe’s Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26) is the single most comprehensive, detailed and insightful guide we have to the state of the nation as it moved into the modern era. Does that claim look over the top? If so, let’s see how the argument runs. For starters, we shouldn’t […]
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There’s a movement to diversify the British literary canon and a crucial step may be right in front of us. Allow me to explain. The British Romantic period—broadly conceived as the 1780s through the early 1830s—was once admired for its religious aspects. Some credited the literature of the period with inspiring an Anglo-Catholic revival in […]
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If you look at the title page of my new book, Shakespeare’s ‘Lady Editors’: A New History of the Shakespearean Text, you might notice that there’s something missing – the space beneath my name is blank, an empty void where, usually, you would see an author’s institutional affiliation. In the three years since I submitted […]
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Hope, at least the word, seems to be everywhere, at least in the United States. On lawns where one once found Christmas “Joy,” “Hope” signs more often reign, and in 2021 some have remained on display throughout the seasons. Hope’s Christian context is decisive, but the word also has a political aura. Martin Luther King’s […]
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Section V of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, titled “A City Visible but Unseen,” is not about an imaginary city but a migrant ghetto wilfully disavowed. The unseen citizenry are undocumented migrants in London who, because of the Thatcher government’s austerity cuts, cannot find affordable accommodation in the public or private sectors, and who live in […]
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In 2020, I was struggling to negotiate my academic work (teaching remotely online and finishing the production process for a new book) while homeschooling three children and mourning the loss of a dear friend. Lockdown was challenging but I recognised my position as one of real privilege – I still had a job, my kids […]
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