Fraser McIlwraith (UCL) - 2019-20 Students
fraser.mcilwraith.15@ucl.ac.uk

Literary Criticism and Dialogue in Renaissance England

My doctoral research considers the emergence of literary criticism in sixteenth-century England, both as a genre of writing and as an intellectual activity, and examines the vexed relationship between humanist poetics and vernacular literary innovation. By examining the close connection between critical texts and imaginative works of prose, poetry, and drama by English writers, I reconsider long-held assumptions about the role of criticism in early modern culture and propose to argue that, far from being a staid body of rules and precepts, Renaissance criticism is in fact a lively site of debate and exchange between different literary traditions.

Primary supervisor: Dr Chris Stamatakis, UCL