Graduate Student, English
Balliol
Thesis Title: John Aubrey's Antiquarian Scholarship: A Study in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters
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Rhodri Lewis
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About
I study the intersection of literature and scholarship between about 1580 and 1800 with particular emphasis on the genealogies of the modern disciplines of English literature, classics, and archaeology. My work seeks to reconceptualise our understanding of how these disciplines evolved and deploy that knowledge to reconsider the uses and origins of modern disciplinary methodologies.
At present I am completing my DPhil theis, 'John Aubrey's Antiquarian Scholarship: A Study in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters'. My thesis is the first complete study of the antiquarian manuscripts of the early Royal Society fellow and polymath, John Aubrey (1626-1697), and sites them within the larger scholarly discourses of early modern Europe.
Planned projects include a study of the interaction between texts and artefacts in the eighteenth century, investigation of literary canon formation, and a deconstruction of the evolution of 'Metaphysical Poets' as a category in twentieth-century literary criticism. More generally, my research interests include scholarly literature of any period, early modern prose, seventeenth-century poetry (both English and Latin), canons and canon formation, and classical reception.
OED, sub "literature":
"Familiarity with letters or books; knowledge acquired from reading or studying books, esp. the principal classical texts associated with humane learning (see humane adj. 2); literary culture; learning, scholarship. Also: this as a branch of study." Allegedly "Now hist.", though how that agrees with the OED's own 2005 citation of such a usage remains to be explained . . . .
Contact Information
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| Address: | Balliol College |
