Key Genres and Media: Text and image (from illuminated poetry to graphic novels); the Gothic (including literature, popular culture, film, television and graphic novels); the novel (eighteenth-century to present); epic and narrative poetry; science fiction.
Authors / Artists Theorists: I have published on William Blake, Judith Butler, Lord Byron, Jacques Derrida, Ben Okri, Alan Moore, Paul Ricoeur, Salman Rushdie and others; I have additional research interests in Iain M. Banks, Warren Ellis, Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Grant Morrison, Bryan Talbot and many others working in the areas listed above and below.
Movements and Modes of Practice: Adaptation and Cultural Inheritance; Graphic Novels and Comics Studies; Critical Theory; Romanticism; the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment; Judaeo-Christian Mysticism and Exegesis; Empiricism and the History of Science.
Research Summary
My overarching interests concern cultural inheritance and the place of literature and art within the wider community. Currently I am researching and publishing on:
Adaptation and Appropriation in the works of William Blake and Alan Moore
The combination of text and image in different media
Literature and Terror (concerning the intersection of politics and the Gothic)
Byron and Politics
Previously, I have published on:
Literature and Pscyhology
Judaeo-Christian Mysticism
New Literatures in English
Empiricism and Radical Protestantism in the Enlightenment
I passionately believe that literature and related arts make considerable contributions to our communities and am especially interested in the ways in which the works and ideas of the past not only underpin much of what we do and think, but also can yield fresh insight regarding contemporary issues. My research thus considers the intersection of literature, art and critical theory from the eighteenth century through to the present day, with a particular emphasis on the works of William Blake and those artists, writers and theorists who have engaged with his work. I have related interests in Gothic literature and media, as well as in the poetry of Lord Byron, particularly with regard to the intersection of politics and terror in his work.