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John Kerrigan (literary scholar)

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John Kerrigan,FBA(born 1956) is a British literary scholar, with interests including the works ofShakespeare,Wordsworthand modern poetry since Emily Dickinson and Hopkins, along with Irish studies.

Kerrigan was born in Liverpool; he was educated there atSt. Edward's Collegefollowed by Oxford, where he went toKeble,later becoming a Junior Research Fellow atMerton.

Since 1982 he has taught at Cambridge where he is a fellow ofSt. John's College.Between 2001 and 2023 he was Professor of English 2000 in theFaculty of English,University of Cambridge.[1]

He has lectured extensively in Europe, North and South America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, and his publications are internationally acclaimed. In 2013 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. Visiting positions include UCLA,[2]Auckland[3]and Princeton.[4]

During the 1980s Kerrigan established himself as one of a group of scholars who revolutionised the editing of Shakespeare by discrediting the practice of 'conflating' variant early texts of such plays asHamletandKing Lear,though his position, like that of others, has become more complicated over time. His own editions includeLove's Labour's Lost(1982) and Shakespeare'sSonnets and A Lover's Complaint(1986). He did further work onA Lover's Complaintrecovering its sources and analogues inMotives of Woe(1991). His recent Shakespearean output includes essays on 'The Phoenix and Turtle' (2013), an extensive analysis of the question 'How Celtic was Shakespeare?', andShakespeare's Binding Language(2016).[5]His 2016 Oxford Wells Shakespeare Lectures were published in 2018 asShakespeare's Originality.[6]

He won theTruman Capote Award for Literary Criticismin 1998 forRevenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon,an ambitious study in comparative literature, and in 2001 published a book of essaysOn Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature.

HisArchipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics 1603-1707(2008) seeks to correct the traditional Anglocentric account of seventeenth-century English Literature by showing how much remarkable writing was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Shakespeare, Milton, and Marvell were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and national groups around Britain and Ireland.[7]

Over the last couple of decades John Kerrigan has published numerous essays on modern poetry, includingLouis MacNeice,Seamus Heaney,Roy Fisher,Geoffrey Hill,Denise Riley,Eiléan Ní ChuilleanáinandPaul Muldoon.[8]Among the topics he has recently addressed are poetry and the migrant crisis[9]and environmentalism.[10]

He has written extensively for theTimes Literary Supplement(London) and theLondon Review of Books.[11]

Works

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  • Ed., William Shakespeare,Love's Labour's Lost(1982)
  • Ed., William Shakespeare,The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint(1986)
  • Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and Female Complaint(1991)
  • Ed., with Michael Cordner and Peter Holland,English Comedy(1994)
  • Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon(1996)
  • Ed., with Peter Robinson,The Thing about Roy Fisher(2000)
  • On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature: Essays(2001)
  • Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics, 1603-1707(2008)
  • Shakespeare's Binding Language(2016)
  • Shakespeare's Originality(2018)

References

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  1. ^"Kerrigan, Prof. John Francis, (born 16 June 1956), Professor of English 2000, University of Cambridge, since 2001; Fellow, St John's College, Cambridge, since 1982".Who's Who 2020.Oxford University Press. 1 December 2019.Retrieved27 June2021.
  2. ^"UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies | Past Distinguished Visiting Scholars".Archived fromthe originalon 11 October 2011.Retrieved27 October2011.
  3. ^"Annual Shakespeare Fellow - the University of Auckland".Archived fromthe originalon 10 September 2011.Retrieved27 October2011.
  4. ^"Professor John Kerrigan is the Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow, Princeton University, 9-12 October 2017"."Professor John Kerrigan is the Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow, Princeton University, 9-12 October 2017 | English Faculty News".
  5. ^"Beating the bounds".
  6. ^"Shakespeare's Originality by John Kerrigan review – what the Bard pilfered and changed".TheGuardian.4 April 2018.
  7. ^"Archipelagic English, by John Kerrigan".Independent.co.uk.21 March 2008.Archivedfrom the original on 13 June 2022.
  8. ^"Jacket 20 - John Kerrigan: Paul Muldoon's Transits".
  9. ^"Lampedusa: Migrant Tragedy".Kerrigan, John (2021)."Lampedusa: Migrant Tragedy".The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry.8(2): 138–157.doi:10.1017/pli.2020.41.
  10. ^"Otters and Others: Ted Hughes to John Kinsella".https://academic.oup /res/article/74/315/532/7160232.{{cite web}}:Missing or empty|title=(help)
  11. ^"John Kerrigan · LRB".
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