Joel Lucyszyn, Corpus Christi

Biographical Information

I graduated with a BA (Class I with distinction) in English from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 2018, where I was awarded the Gillian and John Beer Prize for my dissertation on Byron’s ecopoetics. The following year I graduated with an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies (distinction). I am now a second year PhD at Corpus Christi, funded by the AHRC.

Research Interests

The intervention of my doctoral thesis is to suggest that the convening role of Byron's sexuality has not been sufficiently noted in the challenges his poetry poses to ideologies of nature. I examine how an experience of social denaturalisation marks an aesthetic difference between Byron and his contemporaries, in England, a difference which informs the reception of Byron as a nature writer (within the period and after). I have become interested in his poetry theory and practice, and how this relates to, revises and contradicts contemporaneous thought on sexuality, language, poetry and the environment - especially in their intersections. 

Areas of interest: ecocriticism; the philosophy of nature; poetry in philosophy; poetic theory; sexuality and aesthetics; Romantic poetry and prose; site-writing.