Kenneth Borris
Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton; early modern dramatic and nondramatic literary forms; early modern philosophy, theology, sciences, and culture; allegory; the sublime; fantasy; mythography; iconography; early modern history of sexuality; ancient and early modern theories of the body and mind; early modern visual and decorative arts; Renaissance humanism; modernism.
Refereed publications include three monographs with presses such as Oxford and Cambridge, five edited or co-edited books, and numerous articles, some the length of short monographs. Invited publications include contributions to leading literary reference works such as The Oxford Handbook of the Sublime, and the Oxford handbooks of Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney. Research grants include five major external refereed awards from The Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada, such as my current Insight Grant. My interests in early modern literature and culture are diverse, as indicated above, and I am further much attracted to modernism, which some Renaissance modes of creativity prefigure in many ways, as, in effect, 鈥渆arly modernism.鈥� Writers such as Sir Thomas More, Spenser, and Milton do much that technically anticipates modernist practices, though for different reasons and purposes. A prospective fourth monograph addressing the final efflorescence of Spenserian allegory and its complex cultural contexts is well under way.听
Ph.D. (Edinburgh)
B.A. (Victoria, B.C.)
Books
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xii, 320 pp. Reissued in paperback by Cambridge, 2008.
听
(Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Press, 1991), 93 pp.
Edited Collections
Spenser and Platonism, ed. Kenneth Borris, Jon Quitslund, Carol Kaske, special guest-edited issue of Spenser Studies, XXIV (2009), viii + 526 pp.
, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Rousseau (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 296 pp.
(New York and London: Routledge, 2004), xvi, 424 pp.
, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (Selinsgrove and London: Susquehanna鈥揂ssociated University Presses, 2001), 388 pp. (collection of critical essays).听
Articles and Book Chapters
Essays in Serials and Contributed Volumes
"Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadias," in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500-1700, ed. Margaret P. Hannay et al., 2 vols. (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 2: 89-111.
"Hymnic Epic and The Faerie Queene's Original Printed Format: Canto-Canticles and Psalmic Arguments," Renaissance Quarterly 64.4 (2011): 1148-93. Co-authored with Meredith Donaldson Clark.
鈥淎llegory, Symbol, Emblem,鈥� The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser, ed. Richard A. McCabe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 437-60.
鈥淚ntroduction: Spenser and Platonism,鈥� by Kenneth Borris, Jon Quitslund, and Carol Kaske, Spenser Studies, XXIV (2009), pp. 1-14.
鈥淧latonism and Spenser鈥檚 Poetic: Idealized Imitation, Merlin鈥檚 Mirror, and the Florimells,鈥� Spenser Studies, XXIV (2009), pp. 209-68.
鈥淩eassessing Ellrodt: Critias and The Fowre Hymnes in The Faerie Queene,鈥� Spenser Studies, XXIV (2009), pp. 453-80.
鈥淚ntroduction: The Prehistory of Homosexuality in the Early Modern Sciences,鈥� in The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Rousseau (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 1-40.
鈥淪odomizing Science: Cocles, Patricio Tricasso, and the Constitutional Morphologies of Renaissance Male Same-Sex Lovers,鈥� in The Sciences of Homosexuality in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Rousseau (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 137-64.
鈥淪ub Rosa: Pastorella鈥檚 Allegorical Homecoming, and Closure in the 1596 Faerie Queene,鈥� Spenser Studies 21 (2006): 133-80.
鈥淔lesh, Spirit, and the Glorified Body: Spenser鈥檚 Anthropomorphic Houses of Pride, Holiness, and Temperance,鈥� Spenser Studies 15 (2001): 17-52.
鈥淩[ichard] B[arnfield]鈥檚 Homosocial Engineering in Orpheus His Journey to Hell,鈥� in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (Selinsgrove and London: Susquehanna鈥揂ssociated University Presses, 2001), pp. 332-60.
鈥溾�業le hang a bag and a bottle at thy back鈥欌��: Barnfield鈥檚 Homoerotic Advocacy and the Construction of Homosexuality,鈥� in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (Selinsgrove and London: Susquehanna鈥揂ssociated University Presses, 2001), pp. 193-248.
鈥淢ilton鈥檚 Heterodoxy of the Incarnation and Subjectivity in De Doctrina Christiana and Paradise Lost,鈥� in Living Texts: Interpreting Milton, ed. Charles Durham and Kris Pruitt (Selinsgrove and London: Susquehanna鈥揂ssociated University Presses, 2000), pp. 264-82.
鈥淓lizabethan Allegorical Epics: The Arcadias as Counterparts of The Faerie Queene,鈥� Spenser Studies 13 (1999): 191-221.
鈥淯nion of Mind or in Both One Soul: Allegories of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost,鈥� Milton Studies, 31 (1995): 45-71.
鈥淕eoffrey Whitney鈥檚 Choice of Emblemes: Anglo-Dutch Politics and the Order of Ideal Repatriation,鈥� Emblematica, 8/1 (1994): 81-132.
鈥淎llegory in Paradise Lost: Satan鈥檚 Cosmic Journey,鈥� Milton Studies 26 (1991): 101-33. Nominated for the Hanford Award.
鈥溾�楧iuelish Ceremonies鈥�: Allegorical Satire of Protestant Extremism in The Faerie Queene 痴滨.惫颈颈颈.31-51,鈥� Spenser Studies, 8 (1990): 173-207. Winner of the Isabel MacCaffrey Prize for the best Spenser article published internationally in 1990.
鈥淔ortune, Occasion, and the Allegory of the Quest in Book Six of The Faerie Queene,鈥� Spenser Studies, 7 (1987): 123-45, 301-9.
Notes
鈥淭he 鈥楶roblem鈥� of Homosexuality: Pietro d鈥橝bano (Peter of Abano), Expositio Problematum Aristotelis (Mantua: per . . . Paulum Iohannis de Puzpach [i.e., Butzbach], 1475, Bibl. Osl. 245,鈥� in 75 Books from the Osler Library, ed. Faith Wallis and Pamela Miller (Montreal: Osler Library of the History of Medicine, 2004), pp. 136-7.
鈥淭he Sacraments in The Faerie Queene, in 鈥淪penser鈥檚 Theology: The Sacraments in The Faerie Queene,鈥� Reformation, 6 (2002): 145-54.
鈥淐ritical Introduction: Barnfield鈥檚 Reception and Significance,鈥� in The Affectionate Shepherd: Celebrating Richard Barnfield, ed. Kenneth Borris and George Klawitter (Selinsgrove and London: Susquehanna鈥揂ssociated University Presses, 2001), pp. 13-24.
鈥淕eoffrey Whitney,鈥� in Sixteenth-Century Non-Dramatic Authors, Second Series, Vol. 136 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. David A. Richardson (Detroit: Bruccoli-Clark-Layman, 1994), pp. 336-40.
鈥淩ichard Barnfield,鈥� in Sixteenth-Century Non-Dramatic Authors, Third Series, Vol. 172 of The Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. David A. Richardson (Detroit: Bruccoli-Clark-Layman, 1996), pp. 10-16.
鈥淐辞耻谤迟别蝉测,鈥� in The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: Unversity of Toronto Press, 1990), pp. 194-5.
鈥淪alvage Man,鈥� in The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), p. 624.
- SSHRC Standard Research Grants, 1998-2001, 2004-2007, 2011-2014
- Canada Research Fellow, 1987-92
- Senior Fellowships at Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, University of Toronto
- Isabel MacCaffrey Prize, 1990 (best essay on Spenser published that year)
- 平特五不中 Humanities Research and Arts Legacy Grants
- SSHRCC Doctoral Fellow, 1982-85
- Commonwealth Doctoral Fellow, 1980-83
I have supervised many MA and doctoral projects and theses in diverse areas of early modern and twentieth-century studies (the latter including Mervyn Peake, H. P. Lovecraft, and contemporary American queer novels). Authors and topics include those listed in 鈥渁reas of interest鈥� above, and numerous others.听
University of Victoria
University of Alberta