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Graduate Tutor Email: eric.langley@ucl.ac.uk |  |
Education and Experience
Dr Eric Langley (BA hons, MA dist, PhD: Leeds) was awarded his PhD in 2003, and since then has taught at the Universities of Leeds, York, St Andrews, Sheffield, and Royal Holloway. Having previously been a Teaching Fellow in the department, Eric returned in 2014, and is now an听Associate Professor听in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature.
Research interests
Eric's second monograph -听Shakespeare's Contagious Sympathies: Ill Communications听- was published by Oxford University Press听in 2018.听Counting the cost of compassion, this study of Shakespeare's plays and poetry analyses how medical explanations of disease impact upon philosophical conceptions and literary depictions of his characters who find themselves precariously implicated within a world of ill communications. It examines the influence of scientific thought upon the history of the subject, and explores how Shakespeare鈥攁live to both the importance and dangers of sympathetic communication鈥攁rticulates an increasing sense of both the pragmatic benefits of monadic thought, emotional isolation, and subjective quarantine, while offering his account of the considerable loss involved when we lose faith in vulnerable, tender, and open existence.
Eric鈥檚 first听monograph -听Narcissism and Suicide in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries听(OUP, 2009) - understands听self-love and self-slaughter in terms of self-reflexivity and aggressive isolationism. The book considers the rhetoric of introspection and period conceptions of individualism, reading the narcissist and suicide in relation to Renaissance ocular theory, the pastoral tradition, Ovid, classical influence, and religious text. Other recent or ongoing research considers Renaissance erotica, friendship essays, early modern letters, Lucretian atomism, and Montaigne鈥檚 digressive tendencies.
Eric's debut poetry collection -听Raking Light听- was published by Carcanet in 2017 and was nominated for the Felix Dennis award for best first collection at that year's Forward Prizes. He has poems placed in a number of publications including听PN Review,听New Poetries VI,听3:AM Magazine, and听Blackbox Manifold, and a co-authored sonnet sequence, written with Emily Critchley, with Crater Press.
Eric is currently on the supervisory team for a number of doctoral students whose work focuses, variously, on Renaissance conceptions of ecstatic experience, early-modern semiotic theory, blood, vision, Spenser and Burton, and the parasite. He would welcome enquiries from potential PhD applicants looking to work on relevant subjects.
Publications
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Monographs
Shakespeare's Contagious Sympathies: Ill Communications听(Oxford: OUP,听2018)
Raking Light听(Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2017)
听(Oxford: OUP, 2009)
Articles and Chapters
with Lesel Dawson, 'Affective Inheritances,'听Early Theatre, 20.1 (2017), 133-52
'Standing on a Beach: Shakespeare and the Sympathetic Imagination' (forthcoming)
'Try a little extendedness: Paying attention to Renaissance tenderness' (forthcoming)
鈥�,鈥櫶�Textual Practice, 28 (2014), 161-87
鈥�,鈥櫶�Renaissance Studies, 27 (2013), 318-40
鈥楶lagued by Kindness: Contagious Sympathy in Shakespearean Drama,鈥櫶�Medical Humanities, 37 (2012), 103-109
鈥樷�淎nd Died To Kiss His Shadow:鈥� The Narcissistic Gaze in Shakespeare鈥檚 Venus and Adonis,鈥櫶�Forum for Modern Language Studies, 44.1 (2008)
鈥楢natomising the Eye in Phineas Fletcher鈥檚 The Purple Island: A Literary Case Study,鈥櫶�Renaissance Studies, 20.iii (2006)
鈥樷�淔ilthie and Superfluous Speech:鈥澨�Decadent Rhetoric and the Early-Modern Pornographer,鈥� Decadence in English Literature, ed. Paul Fox, Studies in English Literature (Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2006)
Poems (including co-authored collection)
These Insuing Sonnets, with Emily Critchley (London: Crater Press, 2018)
'6 Sonnets: Call and Response', with Emily Critchley,听Blackbox Manifold, 20 (2018), online
'Reddish-Green',听Blackbox Manifold, 19 (2018), online
'Two poems',听The Forward Book of Poetry, 2018听(London: Faber and Faber, 2017)
'Duos #4:听Sometime too hot...', with Emily Critchley,听3:AM Magazine听(2017),听online
'Argus Panoptes,'听PN Review, 229 (2016)
'Yellow Milkmaid Syndrome,'听Blackbox Manifold, 17 (2016), online
'{{du|he|tao}} A Sequence,'听PN Review, 228 (2016)
'6 Poems',听New Poetries VI: An Anthology, ed. Michael Schmidt and Helen Tookey (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2015), pp. 14-28
'2 Poems,'听PN Review, 216 (2014)