Prof John Kerrigan, St John's
jk10023@cam.ac.uk
Biographical Information
Brought up in Liverpool. After Oxford, I came to Cambridge as a lecturer in 1982. Professor of English 2000 (between 2001 and 2023). Fellow of the British Academy 2013. I have given talks in many parts of the world, including the USA and Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Peru, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand.
Research Interests
Shakespeare; seventeenth-century literature, including cultural relations between the three Stuart kingdoms and into continental Europe; Irish studies; British and Irish poetry since 1900.
Among my publications are:
'Arnold and Seriousness', English, 30 (1981), 263-83
'Wyatt's Selfish Style', Essays and Studies, ns 34 (1981), 1-18
Love's Labour's Lost, ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), 260 pp.
'Wordsworth and the Sonnet: Building, Dwelling, Thinking', Essays in Criticism, 35 (1985), 45-75
Shakespeare's Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), 458pp.
Motives of Woe: Shakespeare and 'Female Complaint', ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), xiv + 310 pp.
'A Complete History of Comic Noses', in Michael Cordner, Peter Holland and John Kerrigan, eds, English Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994), 241-66
'Writing Numbers: Keats, Hopkins, and the History of Chance', in Nicholas Roe, ed., Keats and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 280-308
Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), xv + 404 pp.
'Hidden Ireland: Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin and Munster Poetry', Critical Quarterly 40:4 (1998), 76-100
'Mrs Thatcher's Pearl', in Anna Torti and Piero Boitani, eds, The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1999), 181-99
'Roy Fisher on Location', in John Kerrigan and Peter Robinson, eds, The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), 16-46
On Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature: Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ix + 266 pp.
'Paul Muldoon's Transits', in Tim Kendall and Peter McDonald, eds, Paul Muldoon: Critical Essays (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 125-49
'Notes from the Home Front: Contemporary British Poetry', Essays in Criticism, 54 (2004), 103-27
'The Ticking Fear' [Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems], London Review of Books, 7 February 2008, 15-18
Archipelagic English: Literature, History, and Politics, 1603-1707 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ix + 599 pp.
'Graphics: Charles Tomlinson, Denise Riley, Brian Catling', British and Irish Contemporary Poetry, 1 (2008), 29-48
'Hamlet': The Reasonable Prince (Delhi: Univ. of Delhi, 2008), 23 pp.
'Shakespeare, Oaths and Vows', Proceedings of the British Academy, 167 (2009), 61-89
'Archipelagic Oz', Archipelago, 5 (2010), 54-65
'Louis MacNeice among the Islands', in Fran Brearton, Edna Longley and Peter Mackay, eds, Modern Irish and Scottish Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 58-86
'Oaths, Threats and Henry V', Review of English Studies, 63 (2012), 551-71
'Coriolanus Fidiussed', Essays in Criticism, 62 (2012), 319-53
'Shakespeare, Elegy and Epitaph: 1557-1640', in Jonathan Post, ed., Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 225-44
'Reading "The Phoenix and Turtle"', in Post, ed., Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare's Poetry, 540-59
'Díonbrollach: How Celtic was Shakespeare?', in Willy Maley and Rory Loughnane, eds, Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), xv-xli
'London, Albion', in Peter Robinson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 359-83
'Rogues and Profits', review of Geoffrey Hill, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012, Times Literary Supplement, 6 August 2014, 3-5
'Stages and Plots', review of James Shapiro, 1606: William Shakespeare and the Year of 'Lear', Times Literary Supplement, 9 October 2015, 3-5
Shakespeare's Binding Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), xi + 622 pp.
Shakespeare's Originality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xiv + 167 pp.
'Slavery and Revenge', London Review of Books, 22 October 2020, 31-3
'Caroline Debt: Shakespeare to Shirley', in Laura Kolb and George Oppitz-Trotman, eds, Early Modern Debts, 1550-1700 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 273-304
'Lampedusa: Migrant Tragedy', Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, 8 (2021), 138–57
'Turning Wolfe Tone' [Irish studies], London Review of Books, 20 October 2022, 15-20
'Otters and Others: Ted Hughes to John Kinsella', Review of English Studies, 74 (2023), 532-50
'Getting the Ick' [Shakespeare, race and consent], London Review of Books, 14 December 2023, 27-32
