Jump to content

Jonathan Bate

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ProfessorSir
Andrew Jonathan Bate
CBEFBAFRSL
Bate in 2019
Born(1958-06-26)26 June 1958(age 66)
Kent,United Kingdom
NationalityBritish
Occupations
Known forShakespeare,Romanticism,Ecocriticism
SpousePaula Byrne
AwardsHawthornden Prize,James Tait Black Prize
Academic background
EducationSevenoaks School
Alma materSt Catharine's College, Cambridge
Harvard University
Academic work
InstitutionsTrinity Hall, Cambridge
University of Liverpool
University of Warwick
Worcester College, Oxford
Arizona State University
Main interestsShakespeare,Early Modern Britain,Romanticism,Ecocriticism,Biography

Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate,CBE,FBA,FRSL(born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, scholar, and occasional novelist, playwright and poet. He specializes inShakespeare,Romanticismandecocriticism.He is Regents Professor of Literature and Foundation Professor of Environmental Humanities in a joint appointment in the Department of English in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Sustainability in the Global Futures Laboratory atArizona State University,as well as a Senior Research Fellow atWorcester College, Oxford,where he holds the title of Professor of English Literature.[1]Bate wasProvostof Worcester College from 2011 to 2019.[2]From 2017 to 2019 he wasGresham Professor of Rhetoricin the City of London. He wasknightedin 2015 for services to literary scholarship and higher education. He is also Chair of the Hawthornden Foundation.

Academic and theatrical career

[edit]

He was a Fellow ofTrinity Hall, Cambridge,and then, from 1991 to 2003, King Alfred Professor of English Literature atLiverpool University,before becoming Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at theUniversity of Warwick,where he was subsequently Honorary Fellow of Creativity inWarwick Business School.[3]

In 2011, he was appointed Provost ofWorcester College, Oxford.[4]During his tenure, he led a fundraising campaign to re-endow the college on the occasion of its tercentenary and oversaw the construction of the SultanNazrin ShahCentre, which was shortlisted for theStirling Prize.Bate has held visiting professorships at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles,Yale University,theFolger Shakespeare Library,and theHuntington Library.He sits on the European Advisory Board of thePrinceton University Press.[5]

He was a Governor and for nine years a board member of theRoyal Shakespeare Company.From 2007 to 2011 sat on the Council of theArts and Humanities Research Council.In 2010 he was commissioned byFaber and Faberto write a literary life ofTed Hughes.This was cancelled when the Estate of Ted Hughes withdrew co-operation.[6]The book was subsequently recommissioned by HarperCollins as an"unauthorised" biography.[7]

In 2010,The Man from Stratford,his one-man play forSimon Callow,a commission of theAmbassador Theatre Group,toured the UK prior to an opening on theEdinburgh Fringe.It also played inTrieste.In June 2011 and March 2012 it was revived at theTrafalgar Studios,Whitehall, under the titleBeing Shakespeare.In April 2012, Callow took the show to New York City (Brooklyn Academy of Music) and Chicago. In 2014, it was revived in the West End at theHarold Pinter Theatre.

Writer

[edit]

His earlier publications includeShakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination(1986),Shakespearean Constitutions(1989),Shakespeare and Ovid(1993), the Arden edition ofTitus Andronicus(1995, revised and updated with extended introduction, 2018),The Genius of Shakespeare(1997), two influential works ofecocriticism,Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition(1991) andThe Song of the Earth(2000).Romantic Ecologyis specifically credited with having introduced literary ecocriticism to Britain,[8]making him a pioneer of the field.[9]He has also written a novel based indirectly on the life ofWilliam Hazlitt,The Cure for Love.

His biography ofJohn Clare(2003) won theHawthornden Prizeand theJames Tait Black Memorial Prize(for biography), as well as being short listed for theSamuel Johnson Prize,theRoyal Society of LiteratureHeinemann Prizeand theSouth Bank ShowAward. In America it won the NAMI Book Award. Bate also edited Clare'sSelected Poetry(Faber and Faber, 2004). These works have been credited with reviving popular and critical interest in Clare's poetry.[10]

His book,The Genius of Shakespearewas praised bySir Peter Hall,founder of theRSC,as "the best modern book on Shakespeare".[11]It was reissued with a new afterword in 2008 and again in 2016 as a Picador Classic, with a further afterword and a new introduction by Simon Callow.

With Eric Rasmussen, Bate edited Shakespeare'sComplete Worksfor theRoyal Shakespeare Company,published in April 2007 as part of theRandom HouseModern Library.This was the first edition since that ofNicholas Rowein 1709 to use theFirst Folioas primary copy text for all the plays. It won the Falstaff Award for best Shakespearean book of the year. The edition faced criticism for removingA Lover's Complaintfrom the Shakespeare canon.[12]Each play is also published in an individual volume, with additional materials, including interviews with leading stage directors.

A companion volume of the "apocryphal" plays was published in 2013 under the titleCollaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others.It is the first Shakespeare collection to includeThe Spanish Tragedy,laying out the argument for Shakespeare's authorship of the additional scenes. It also won the Falstaff Award.

Bate's intellectual and contextual biographySoul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare(London, 2008, and in the United States asSoul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare,Random House, 2009) was runner-up for thePENAmerican Center's PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for the best biography of the year. In 2010 he publishedEnglish Literature: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford University Press) and in 2011, as editor,The Public Value of the Humanities(Bloomsbury Academic), a work sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. His monographHow the Classics Made Shakespeare(2019), developed from the inauguralE. H. GombrichLectures at theWarburg Institute,was published by Princeton University Press in 2019 and a new biography ofWilliam Wordsworthwas published on the occasion of the poet's 250th anniversary in April 2020.

Bate is also a frequent writer and presenter of documentary features forBBC Radio 4.His subjects have includedThe Elizabethan Discovery of England,Faking the Classics,The Poetry of History(in which poems about great events are compared to historical accounts), andIn Wordsworth's Footsteps(broadcast for the 250th anniversary ofWilliam Wordsworth). He wrote the script forSimon Callow's one-man showShakespeare: the Man from Stratford(later renamedBeing Shakespeare) for the 2010Edinburgh Festival.[13]

In 2012 he served as consultant curator for theBritish Museumround reading room exhibition for theCultural Olympiad,Shakespeare: Staging the World,co-writing the catalogue with curatorDora Thornton.[14]

His 2015 biography,Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life,published globally byHarperCollins,was shortlisted for theSamuel Johnson Prizeand was named by the Biographers' International Organization as the outstanding biography of the year in the category of Arts and Literature.

He is widely regarded as having made a significant contribution to the study of Shakespearean sources, texts and reception, to influence study and the endurance of the classics, toecocriticism,to the revived reputations of Shakespeare'sTitus Andronicusand of the poetJohn Clare,as well as to the sustaining of public discourse about the humanities in general and literature in particular. He has surveyed the trajectory of his critical career in an interview with the online scholarly journalExpositions:https://expositions.journals.villanova.edu/article/view/2211/1990.

He is currently the Chair of the board of trustees for the Hawthornden Foundation.[15]

Personal life

[edit]

He is married to the author and biographerPaula Byrne.They have three children.[16]

Honours

[edit]

In the 2006Queen's Birthday Honours,he was appointedCommander of the Order of the British Empire(CBE) "for services to higher education". He wasknightedin the2015 New Year Honoursfor services to literary scholarship and higher education, the citation describing him as "a true Renaissance man".[17][18]

He was electedFellow of the British Academy(FBA) in 1999 andFellow of the Royal Society of Literature(FRSL) in 2004.[4]He is anHonorary Fellowof his undergraduate college,St Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Bibliography

[edit]

Books

[edit]
  • Shakespeare and the English Romantic imagination.Oxford University Press. 1986.
  • Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism 1730–1830.Oxford University Press. 1989.ISBN0-19-811749-3.
  • Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition.Routledge. 1991.
  • Shakespeare and Ovid.Oxford University Press. 1993.[19]
  • Co-editor,Shakespeare: An Illustrated Stage History.Oxford University Press. 1996.ISBN978-0-19-812372-9.
  • The Genius of Shakespeare.Picador/Oxford University Press. 1997.ISBN978-0-19-512196-4.[20]
  • The Cure for Love.Picador. 1998.
  • The Song of the Earth.Picador/Harvard University Press. 2000.ISBN9780674001688.
  • John Clare: A Biography.Picador/Farrar Straus and Giroux. 2003.[21]
  • Soul of the Age: The Life, Mind and World of William Shakespeare.Viking. 2008.ISBN978-0-670-91482-1.
  • English Literature: A Very Short Introduction.Oxford University Press. 2010.ISBN978-0-19-956926-7.
  • Editor,The Public Value of the Humanities.Bloomsbury. 2011.
  • Shakespeare: Staging the World.British Museum London/Oxford University Press New York. 2012.ISBN978-0-7141-2824-5.(British Museum exhibition, co-authored with Dora Thornton)
  • Co-editor,Worcester: Portrait of an Oxford College.Third Millennium. 2014.
  • Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life.William Collins London/HarperCollins New York/Fourth Estate Sydney. 2015.[22]
  • The Shepherd's Hut: Poems.Unbound. 2017. 978-1-7835-2430-3
  • How the Classics made Shakespeare.Princeton University Press. 2019.ISBN978-0-19-956926-7.
  • Radical Wordsworth: The Poet Who Changed the World.Yale University Press. 2020.ISBN978-0-3001-6964-5.[23]
  • Bright Star, Green Light: The Beautiful Works & Damned Lives of John Keats & F. Scott Fitzgerald.William Collins UK; Yale University Press USA. 2021.ISBN978-0-300-25657-4
  • The Poetry of History.BBC Studios. Audiobook. 2021.
  • Mad About Shakespeare: From Classroom to Theatre to Emergency Room.William Collins. 2022.ISBN978-0-00-816746-2.

Editions

[edit]
  • Charles Lamb: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia.Oxford University Press. 1987.
  • The Romantics on Shakespeare.Penguin Books. 1992.
  • The Arden Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus.Routledge. 1995.(Revised version, 2018)
  • John Clare: Selected Poems.Faber and Faber. 2004.
  • The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works.Macmillan/Random House Modern Library. 2007.
  • The RSC Shakespeare: Individual Works, 34 vols.Macmillan/Random House Modern Library. 2008.
  • The RSC Shakespeare: Collaborative Plays by Shakespeare and Others.Macmillan. 2013.
  • Stressed Unstressed: Classic Poems to Ease the Mind, co-edited with Paula Byrne, Sophie Ratcliffe, Andrew Schuman.William Collins. 2016.
  • The RSC Shakespeare: Complete Works Second Edition.Bloomsbury Academic. 2022.

Articles

[edit]

Out of the Twilight,New Statesman,130, no. 4546, (16 July 2001), pp. 25–27.

‘Othello and the Other: Turning Turk: The Subtleties of Shakespeare's Treatment of Islam’, TLS: The Times Literary Supplement,19 October 2001, pp. 14–15.

Hazlitt, William (1778-1830),Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004),

‘Was Shakespeare an Essex Man?’,Proceedings of the British Academy,162 (2009), pp. 1–28. The 2008 British Academy Shakespeare Lecture.

‘Shakespeare in the Twilight of Romanticism: Wagner, Swinburne, Pater’,Shakespeare Jahrbuch,146 (2010), pp. 11–25. The 2009 Shakespeares-Tag Lecture, Weimar.

‘Much throwing about of brains’,Brain: A Journal of Neurology,132.9 (September 2009), pp. 2617–2620,https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awp205

‘Books do Furnish a Mind: the Art and Science of Bibliotherapy’, with Andrew Schuman,The Lancet,20 Feb 2016,https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)00337-8

‘ “The infirmity of his age”: Shakespeare’s 400th Anniversary’,The Lancet,23 April 2016,https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30269-0

‘The Anatomy of MelancholyRevisited’,The Lancet,6 May 2017,https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)31152-2

‘The worst is not, so long as we can say “This is the worst” ’,The Lancet,14 April 2020, https://doi.org./10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30811-4

‘Cherchez la femme: Keats and Mrs Jones’,TLS: The Times Literary Supplement,19 February 2021, https://www.the-tls.co.uk/issues/february-19-2021/

‘John Keats in the season of mists’,The Lancet,22 February 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00449-9

References

[edit]
  1. ^"Professor's expertise in Shakespeare leads to top faculty honor"ASU News, 22 February 2024
  2. ^Bate, Jonathan (11 March 2019)."Message from The Provost".Worcester College, Oxford.Retrieved14 September2019.
  3. ^[1]Archived18 February 2015 at theWayback Machine
  4. ^ab"Bate, Professor Sir Jonathan".Faculty Members.Faculty of English, University of Oxford. Archived fromthe originalon 15 January 2015.Retrieved15 January2015.
  5. ^"Princeton University Press, European Advisory Board".Press.princeton.edu. 7 July 2011. Archived fromthe originalon 8 June 2011.Retrieved28 August2013.
  6. ^Jonathan Bate,"How the actions of the Ted Hughes estate will change my biography",The Guardian,2 April 2014.
  7. ^"Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life, by Jonathan Bate"Archived23 January 2020 at theWayback Machine,HarperCollins publishers.
  8. ^DeMott, Nick (25 August 2018)."A Brief History of Ecocriticism:".Medium.Retrieved18 October2023.
  9. ^Brockbank, William (29 April 2021)."The Ecocritics".Anthroposphere.Retrieved18 October2023.
  10. ^Motion, Andrew (18 October 2003)."Sharp seeing, deep feeling".The Guardian.ISSN0261-3077.Retrieved18 October2023.
  11. ^"RSC Shakespeare Complete Works Collector's Edition | Palgrave Macmillan".Palgrave.com. 22 June 2007.Retrieved28 August2013.
  12. ^Rosenbaum, Ron (12 June 2008)."Are Those Shakespeare's" Balls "?".Slate.Retrieved1 November2020.
  13. ^Dickson, Andrew (29 February 2012)."Bard labour: Patrick Stewart and Simon Callow tackle Shakespeare the man".The Guardian.London. p. G2–16.Retrieved28 August2013.
  14. ^"Shakespeare: staging the world"(Press release). British Museum. April 2012.Retrieved28 May2012.
  15. ^"People".Hawthornden Foundation.Retrieved20 July2023.
  16. ^"Biography".jonathanbate.com.University of Oxford.Retrieved15 January2015.
  17. ^"No. 61092".The London Gazette(Supplement). 31 December 2014. p. N2.
  18. ^"2015 New Year Honours List"(PDF).Government of the United Kingdom. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on 2 January 2015.Retrieved25 November2015.
  19. ^Wheater, Isabella (February 1999). "Reviewed Work:Shakespeare and Ovidby Jonathan Bate ".The Review of English Studies.50(197): 84–87.doi:10.1093/res/50.197.84.JSTOR517771.
  20. ^Berek, P.(2000). "Review of 'The Genius of Shakespeare' by Jonathan Bate".Shakespeare Quarterly.51(1): 112–114.doi:10.2307/2902334.JSTOR2902334.
  21. ^Motion, Andrew(17 October 2003)."Review ofJohn Clareby Jonathan Clare ".The Guardian.(SeeJohn Clare.)
  22. ^Maxwell, Glyn(21 December 2015)."Review ofTed Hughes: The Unauthorised Lifeby Jonathan Bate ".The New York Times.
  23. ^Cooke, Rachel(14 April 2020)."Review ofRadical Wordsworthby Jonathan Bate ".The Guardian.
[edit]
Academic offices
Preceded by Provost ofWorcester College, Oxford
2011–2019 		Succeeded by
Kate Tunstall(interim)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jonathan_Bate&oldid=1230694083"