Richard Wilson (scholar)

Professor Richard Wilson
Occupation	Early Modern Scholar and Lecturer at Kingston University

Professor Richard Wilson (born 1950)^[1] is the Sir Peter Hall Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Kingston University, London.^[2]

Education and employment

Richard Wilson studied at York University (1970-5) with Philip Brockbank and F.R. Leavis, who influenced his close reading in historical contexts. He wrote his Ph.D thesis on Shakespeare and Renaissance perspective.

Taught at University of Lancaster 1978-2005:

• Lecturer in English Literature, 1978
• Reader in Renaissance Studies, 1993
• Professor of Renaissance Studies, 1994
• Director of the celebrated Lancaster Shakespeare Programme, 1995–2005

Taught at Cardiff University 2006-2012

• Professor in English Literature

Taught at Kingston University 2012-

Visiting Fellowships

• Visiting Fellow, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, 1991-2
• Visiting Professor, University of Paris III (Sorbonne Nouvelle), 2001-2
• 2006 Fellow, Shakespeare's Globe, London^[3][4]
• Visiting Professor, University of Paris IV (Paris-Sorbonne), 2011–12

Special Lectures

• 2001 British Academy Shakespeare Annual Lecture on the theme of exile: 'A World Elsewhere: Shakespeare's Sense of an Exit'^[5]

• 2004 Rutherford Lecture at the University of Kent: 'Shakespeare in Hate: Performing the Virgin Queen'

• 2005 Stachniewski Lecture at Manchester University: 'Making Men of Monsters: Shakespeare in the company of strangers'^[6]

• 2006 Shakespeare's Globe Fellowship Lecture, "Fools of Time: Shakespeare and the Martyrs", on Shakespeare and the suicide-bombers^[3]

• 2012 Shakespeare Institute Lecture, Stratford: "Monstrous To Our Human Reason: Minding the gap in 'The Winter's Tale'" (8 March) ^[7]

International Conferences

Richard Wilson has organised several international conferences:

• Religion, Region, Patronage and Performance at Lancaster University and Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, 1999^[8]
• The New Shakespeare: A writer and his readers. The Return of the Author in Shakespeare Studies, Lancaster Castle 2004^[8]
• Shakespeare: Violence & Terror, The Globe, 2006^[9]
• 'Shakespeare and Derrida', Cardiff University, 2007^[10]
• 'Shakespeare and Wales', Cardiff University, 2010^[11]

Academic Advisor

Since 1999 he has been a Trustee of Shakespeare North.^[12] He is Academic Advisor on its project to rebuild the Elizabethan playhouse at Prescot (Knowsley) near Liverpool.^[13]

He was an academic advisor for the BBC series In Search of Shakespeare (2001).^[14] He appears in the series, interviewed by Michael Wood.

Publications

His publications include Will Power, Secret Shakespeare and Shakespeare in French Theory. Influenced by French and German contemporary thought, Wilson reads Shakespearean drama in terms of its undecidability. It is this fundamental undecidability that led him to his famous proposition, in Secret Shakespeare, that Shakespeare's is a theatre of "resistance to the resistance."^[15] Ultimately, what this theatre of shadows stages is "the instability of the opposition between authorized and unauthorized violence" and "the recognition of the reversibility of monsters and martyrs, terrorists and torturers, or artists and assassins."^[16] Thus in Shakespeare and French Theory he argues that while for Anglo-Saxon culture Shakespeare is a man of the monarchy, in France he has always been the man of the mob.^[17] He is also known for research on Shakespeare's Catholic background and possible Lancashire connections. He argued that 'though Shakespeare was born into a Catholic world, he reacted against it',^[15] but that his plays all start from the 'Bloody Question' of a test of love or loyalty. Associated with the British Cultural Materialist school of criticism, according to Will Power (1993) his work aims to combine 'high theory and low archives'. He has been described by A.D. Nuttall as 'Perhaps the most brilliant of the Shakespearean Historicists'.^[18]

Richard Wilson has published numerous articles in academic journals, and is on the editorial board of the journal Shakespeare.^[19]

Books

• Shakespeare: 'Julius Caesar' (1992) ISBN 978-0-14-077265-4
• Will Power: Essays on Shakespearean Authority (1993) ISBN 978-0-8143-2492-9
• Secret Shakespeare: Studies in Theatre, Religion and Resistance (2004) ISBN 978-0-7190-7025-9
• Shakespeare in French Theory: King of Shadows (2006) ISBN 978-0-415-42165-2

Edited volumes

• New Historicism and Renaissance Drama (with Richard Dutton, 1992) ISBN 978-0-582-04554-5
• Christopher Marlowe (1999) ISBN 978-0-582-04554-5
• New Casebooks: Julius Caesar (2001) ISBN 978-0-333-75467-2
• Region, Religion and Patronage (with Richard Dutton and Alison Findlay) (2004) ISBN 978-0-7190-6369-5
• Theatre and Religion (with Richard Dutton and Alison Findlay) (2004) ISBN 978-0-7190-6363-3
• Shakespeare's Book: Essays in Reading, Writing and Reception (with Richard Meek and Jane Rickard) (2008) ISBN 978-0-7190-7905-4

Newspaper articles

• Times Literary Supplement, 19.12.1997 - 'Shakespeare and the Jesuits'^[20]
• The Independent, 28.04.2005 - 'Shakespeare understood that every foreigner brings gifts'^[6]

Main influences

• Cultural Materialism
• New Historicism
• Stephen Greenblatt
• F.R. Leavis
• Jacques Derrida
• Michel Foucault
• Walter Benjamin
• Carl Schmitt

Books reviewed

• Stuart Sillars, "Review: Claire Asquith (2004), Shadowplay. Richard Wilson (2004), Secret Shakespeare", Nordic Journal of English Studies 4(2), (December 2005).^[21]
• The Free Library - Review of Shakespeare in French Theory by Christopher Pye (January 2009)^[22]
• The Observer - Joint review of Richard Wilson's Secret Shakespeare and Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World (October 2004)^[23]
• Peter Holland, 'Mystery Man', New York Review of Books, December 16, 2004, 34-8^{[citation needed]}
• Anne Barton, 'The One and Only', The New York Review of Books, May 11, 2006^[24]

References

External links

• Cardiff Shakespeare