William James Simpson
William James Simpson (born 16 March 1954, Melbourne) is an Australian academic.
Education
Work Life
Simpson has worked in academia in Australia, the United Kingdom and The United States of America focusing on Medieval Literature more recently on Middle English and Early Modern literature and culture from 1150-1600.
Appointments
- Tutor in English Literature and Language, University of Melbourne (1977–1978)
- Lecturer in English Literature, Westfield College, University of London 1981-89
- Lecturer, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge (1989–1999)
- Official Fellow and College Lecturer, Girton College, University of Cambridge (1989–1999)
- Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English, University of Cambridge (1999–2003)
- Professorial Fellow, Girton College, University of Cambridge (1999–2003)
- Life Fellow, Girton College, University of Cambridge (2003)
- Professor of English and American Literature, Harvard University (2004–2006)
- Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard University (2006-)[1]
- College Professor, Harvard University (2008-)
- Chair of Harvard University English Department (2010-)
Awards
Work
His early work centred around literary analysis of poetry, especially the late 14th century English poem, Piers Plowman.[2] He later worked on Medieval Humanism. In 2002, he published an award winning literary history.[3] His most recent work, "Burning to Read" centres on the fundamentalist Bible reading in the early 16th century.
Simpson frequently lectures internationally[4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] and reviews books extensively for a range of publications.[15][16][17][18][19]
Simpson contributes to many organisations and societies focussing on literature.[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]
Books: Author
- Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1 (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990)
- Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower’s “Confessio amantis,” Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
- Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547, Vol 2 of The Oxford English Literary History, General Editor Jonathan Bate (Oxford University Press, 2002)
- Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, second, revised edition (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2007)
- Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007)
- Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press USA, 2011)
Books: Editor
- The Norton Anthology of English Literature, General Editors Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams; “The Middle Ages”, ed. Alfred David and James Simpson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 1-484
- John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)
- Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xiv + 250 pp. 2005
- Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986, 250 pp. 133–153
Books: Contributor
- "Parisian Libraries" for The Index of Middle English Prose, General Editor A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989)
- “The Rule of Medieval Imagination,” in Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
- The Power of impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman - James Simpson in William Langland's Piers Plowman: a book of essays - Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (Editor)
- Desire and the Scripural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman - James Simpson in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages - Rita Copeland (Editor)
- “Rhetoric, Conscience and the Playful Positions of Sir Thomas More” for The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature, 1485-1603, edited by Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 121-36
- “Sixteenth-Century Fundamentalism and the Specter of Ambiguity, or The Literal Sense is Always a Fiction” for Writing Fundamentlism, Klaus Stierstorfer (ed.) with Axel Stähler (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 133-54
- “John Lydgate,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Literature, edited by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 205-16
- “The Economy of Involucrum: Idleness in Reason and Sensuality,” in Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager(University of Toronto Press, 2009), 390-414
- “Vernacular Literary Consciousness, c. 1100 – c. 1500: French, German and English Evidence,” with Kevin Brownlee, Tony Hunt, Ian Johnson, Alastair Minnis, and Nigel F. Palmer, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol 2, The Middle Ages, Eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 422-71
- “Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies,” in Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, edited by David Matthews and Gordon McMullan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17-30
- “An Appendix of Literary Terms,” in Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8, Co-Editor Alfred David, General Editor Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton: New York. 2006), 19 pages
- “Subjects of Triumph and Literary History: Dido and Petrarch in Petrarch’s Trionfi and Africa,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005): 489-508. Translated and republished as “Soggetti di trionfo e storia letteraria: Didone e Petrarca nell’Africa e nei Trionfi di Petrarca,” in Petrarca: canoni, esemplarità, edited by Valeria Finucci (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), 73-92
- “Saving Satire after Arundel: John Audelay’s Marcol and Solomon,”in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, edited by Ann Hutchison and Helen Barr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 387-404
- “Pecock and Fortescue,” for A Companion to Middle English Prose, edited by A. S. G. Edwards (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 271–88
- “Violence, Narrative and Proper Name: Sir Degaré, “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney,” and the Anglo-Norman Folie Tristan dOxford,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 122-41
- “Hoccleve,” “Usk” and “Beast Fable” entries for Medieval England: An Encyclopaedia, General Editor, Paul E. Szarmach (New York: Garland, 1998), 111-12.
- “The Sacrifice of Lady Rochford: Henry Parker’s Translation of De claris mulieribus,” in Triumphs of English: Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court. New Essays in Interpretation, edited by Marie Axton and James P. Carley (London: British Library Publications, 2000), pp. 153–69
- “The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman,” in William Langland’s Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays, edited by K M. Hewett-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 145–165
- “Humanism,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1. William Chester Jordan, Editor in Chief (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), pp. 279–82
- “Contemporary English Writers,” in A Companion to Chaucer, edited by Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 114–32
- ““Dysemol daies and Fatal houres”: Lydgate’s Destruction of Thebes and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale,” in The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays in Honour of Douglas Gray, edited by H Cooper and S Mapstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 15-33
- “Desire and the Scriptural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, edited by Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 215–43
- ““Ut Pictura Poesis”: A Critique of Robert Jordan’s Chaucer and the Shape of Creation,” in Interpretation Medieval and Modern: J.A.W.Bennett Memorial Lectures, eighth series, edited by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-87
- “Nobody’s Man: Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes,” in London and Europe, edited by Julia Boffey and Pamela King (London: Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 1995), pp. 150–80
- “Madness and Texts: Hoccleve’s Series,” in Chaucer and Fifteenth Century Poetry, edited by Janet Cowen and Julia Boffey, King’s College London Medieval Studies, 5 (London: King’s College, London, 1991), pp. 15–29
- “The Constraints of Satire in Mum and the Sothsegger and Piers Plowman,” in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, edited by Helen Phillips (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 11–30
- “The Role of Scientia in Piers Plowman,” in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G.H.Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 49–65
Articles
- “Open, Closed and Divided Books: Reflections on the Two Cambridges,“ Girton College Annual Review, 2004-5 (Girton College Cambridge), pp. 18–20
- “George Harrison Russell (1923-2006),” Proceedings, Australian Academy of the Humanities (2006), 46-49
- “Literature on Foot”, for What’s the Word?, NPR, 2007
- “Crisis in the Humanities? What Crisis?”, in “Off the Page: Harvard University Press Author Forum”
- “Why Liberals are Weak Faced with Fundamentalism,” History News Network, posted 25 February 2008, at http://hnn.us/articles/46753.html
- Appearance on “John Leland’s Travels” BBC Radio 3, Sunday 26 April 2009.
- “Tyndale as Promoter of Figural Allegory and Figurative Language: A Brief Declaration of the Sacraments,” for Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 245 (2008): 37-55
- “Bonjour Paresse: Literary Waste and Recycling in Book 4 of Gower’s Confessio amantis,” The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Publications of the British Academy, 151 (2007), 257-84
- “Making History Whole: Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies”, in e-Colloquia, 3 (2005), at http://www.ecolloquia.com/issues/200501/index.html
- “Confessing Literature,” English Language Notes 44 (2006): 121-26
- “Chaucer as a European Writer,” in The Yale Companion to Chaucer, ed. Seth Lerer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 55-86
- “Consuming Ethics: Caxton’s History of Reynard the Fox,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood, edited by Alan Fletcher and Anne-Marie D’Arcy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 321–36
- “Not the Last Word,” being a reply to review articles for a number of JMEMS wholly dedicated to consideration of Reform and Cultural Revolution, JMEMS, 35 (2005), 111-19.
- “Martyrdom in the Literal Sense: Surrey’s Psalm Paraphrases,” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (South Korea), 12 (2004), 133-165
- “Chaucer’s Presence and Absence, 1400-1550,” A Chaucer Companion, edited by Jill Mann and Piero Boitani, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 251–69
- “Faith and Hermeneutics: Pragmatism versus Pragmatism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 33 (2003), 215-39
- “Grace Abounding: Evangelical Centralisation and the End of Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies, 14 (2000), 1-25
- “Bulldozing the Middle Ages: the Case of “John Lydgate,” New Medieval Literatures, 4 (2000), 213-42
- “Medieval Literature, Class 1,” in The Virtual Classroom, http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/vclass/virtclas.htm, 2000-
- “Breaking the Vacuum: Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 29 (1999), 325-55
- “Ethics and Interpretation: Reading Wills in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 20 (1998), 73-100
- “Ageism: Leland, Bale and the Laborious Start of English Literary History, 1350-1550,” New Medieval Literatures, 1 (1997), 213-35
- “The Death of the Author?: Skelton’s Bowge of Court,” in The Timeless and the Temporal, Writings in Honour of John Chalker, edited by Elizabeth Maslen (London: Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1993), pp. 58–79
- “The Information of Genius in Book III of the Confessio Amantis,” Mediaevalia, 16 (1993, for 1990), 159-95
- “’After Craftes Conseil clotheth yow and fede’: Langland and the City of London,” in England in the Fourteenth Century, Proceedings of the Harlaxton Conference, 1991, edited by N. Rogers (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1993), pp. 111-129
- “The Information of Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus: a Preposterous Interpretation,” Traditio 47 (1992), 113-160
- “Poetry as Knowledge: Dante’s Paradiso XIII,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 25 (1989), 329-43
- “Ironic Incongruence in the Prologue and Book I of Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” Neophilologus, 72 (1988), 617-32
- “Spirituality and Economics in Passus I-VII of the B-Text of Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 1 (1987), 83- 103
- “From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman,” Medium Aevum, 55 (1986), 1-23
- “The Transformation of Meaning: a Figure of Thought in Piers Plowman,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 37 (1986), 1-23
- “Dante’s “Astripetam Aquilam” and the Theme of Poetic Discretion in the House of Fame,” Essays and Studies, n.s. 39 (1986), 1-18
- “Et Vidit Deus Cogitationes Eorum: a Parallel Instance and Possible Source for Langland’s Use of a Biblical Formula at Piers Plowman B.XV.200a,” Notes and Queries, n.s. 33 (1986), 9-13
- “Spiritual and Earthly Nobility in Piers Plowman,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 86 (1985), 467-81
References
- ^ English: Graduate & alumni profiles - Melbourne University
- ^ Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1 (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990)
- ^ Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547, Vol 2 of The Oxford English Literary History, General Editor Jonathan Bate (Oxford University Press, 2002)
- ^ Clarendon Lectures, Oxford University Press and University of Oxford(2009): "The Sins of the Fathers: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition"
- ^ Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, British Academy (2006): "Bonjour Paresse: Idleness in Middle English Literature"
- ^ University of Chicago, English Department and Center for British Studies (2009): "Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the English Revolution"
- ^ University of Oxford, “After Arundel” Conference (2009): "Images in and Around Arundel"
- ^ Melbourne University, Australia (2008): "Iconoclasm in Melbourne, Massachusetts and the Museum of Modern Art"
- ^ University of Western Australia(2008) "Leaning to Die: The pre-Reformation English Image"
- ^ Duke University, “In the Footsteps of Petrarch”: International Conference(2004): "Subjects of Triumph and Literary History: Dido and Petrarch in Petrarch’s Trionfi and Africa"
- ^ Korea National University, November (2003): "Martyrdom in the Literal Sense: Surrey’s Psalm Paraphrases"
- ^ Université Paris I, Sorbonne, December (2002): "Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies"
- ^ University of Victoria, BC, Lansdowne Lecture (2002): "Reform and Cultural Revolution 1350-1550"
- ^ University of Cambridge, Inaugural Lecture(2000): "The Rule of Medieval Imagination"
- ^ Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie, eds., John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past: Studies in Early Modern Culture and the History of the Book. (London: The British Library, 2004), for Speculum 81 (2006), 849-50
- ^ Ralph Hanna, London Literature, 1300-1380 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xxi, 359, for Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 290-93
- ^ Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, for Speculum 82 (2006), 198-200
- ^ john Bowers, Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007, for Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 30 (2008), 343-46
- ^ J.A. Burrow, The Poetry of Praise (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), for Notes and Queries, 56 (2009): 278-280
- ^ Organizer, Cultural Reformations Conference, Harvard University 13–16 September 2008
- ^ Founding Co-editor, with David Aers and Sarah Beckwith, ReFormations: Medieval and Early Modern, a monograph series published by University of Notre Dame Press, 2006- (two books published by 2009)
- ^ Trustee, New Chaucer Society, 2004-2006
- ^ Initiator and organiser of “Suffering History: Martyrdom in England 1401-1573,” 30 June-2 July, Queens” College Cambridge 2002
- ^ Co-organiser of the Second International Langland Conference, 29–31 July 1999, University of North Carolina, Asheville
- ^ Co-organiser of “Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm,” an interdisciplinary conference at King’s College Cambridge Research Centre, 29–30 June 1999
- ^ Member, Editorial Board, Parergon, Journal of the Australian & New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies 1999-
- ^ Co-Editor, Yearbook of Langland Studies Vol 14, 1993-1996
- ^ Secretary, London Medieval Society, 1987-89
Persondata |
Name |
Simpson, William James |
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Short description |
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Date of birth |
16 March 1954 |
Place of birth |
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Date of death |
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Place of death |
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