Prof. Michael Hurley
Biography
I am Professor of Literature and Theology, and a Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity College.
Educated at the Universities of Cambridge (PhD) and St Andrews (MA), I have taught at Cambridge since 2005. I was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard in 2009, a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, in 2021, and a Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne in 2024. I was the Inaugural International Visiting Scholar at the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation at Australian Catholic University, Sydney, in 2025.
Other positions: Honorary Professor (Professore honoris causa in artes liberals) of the International Institute for Hermeneutics at Warsaw University, Poland; Wordsworth Crausaz Interdisciplinary Fellow in Philosophy at CRASSH (2018); Co-editor of The Hopkins Quarterly; Subject editor for Journal of Inkling Studies (G. K. Chesterton); Scientific Committee of The Global Council for Anthropological Linguistics, SOAS, University of London; Editorial board of the Cambridge Elements series in Literature and Religion since 1500.
Alongside my academic work, I frequently give talks and public lectures on the philosophical and theological challenges posed by art and literature. I am a contributor to the BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on the Today programme; recent episodes here on: writing, ghosts, death, mind-control, anniversairies, AI, beauty, language, homelessness, holidays, dogs, silence, gratitude, ancestors, creation, relics, fighting, euthanasia, reality, humour, discrimination, service.
More information can be found on my personal website
Research Interests
I have broad literary tastes and interests, across poetry, fiction, and non-fiction prose, mostly within the period 1750-1950. My research is interdisciplinary—across literature, philosophy, and theology—and it is directed, above all, towards ultimate questions and questions of value.
Among the writers I love and have published on are: Dante, Blake, Wordsworth, Newman, Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, Swinburne, Pater, William James, Hopkins, Yeats, Chesterton, T. S. Eliot.
Some guiding principles for my research:
- Linguistic and literary forms and styles are not mere conventions or ornaments; they animate, shape, and fundamentally define what, as well as how, a text means.
- Criticism should begin with a text’s aesthetic qualities but is completed by considering the truths—ethical and metaphysical—that its aesthetic achievement makes possible.
- Criticism is most edifying when it strives to read a text on its own terms, rather than imposing anachronistic or alien standards upon it. At the same time, as F. R. Leavis observed, “a serious study of literature inevitably leads outwards into other studies and disciplines.”
- Religious belief—including what William James called the “religious impulse,” a broader orientation toward the transcendent—is a distinctive mode of thought and feeling and should not be dismissed in advance as mere delusion, sublimation, or projection. Exploring it with sympathetic rigour enriches our understanding of human nature and experience and may also offer intimations of transcendent realities.
Areas of Graduate Supervision
I am interested in supervising within any of my research interests, outlined above.
PhDs under my supervision have included: Anna Nickerson, Frontiers of Consciousness: Tennyson, Hardy, Hopkins, Eliot; Michael Skansgaard, The “Aesthetic” of the Blues Aesthetic: Langston Hughes and Vernacular Close-Reading; Samuel Webb, Fighting Talk: Styles of Polemical Writing in Britain, 1824-1880; Lewis Roberts, The Ends of the Line and The Passion of History; Thomas Docherty, Consummatum est: the end of the word in Geoffrey Hill; R. Eric Tippin, Playing Modern: Essaying, 1880-1920, Wilde, Chesterton, Woolf; Clinton Collister, Visions of Origins and Ends: Personhood in the Poetry of T.S. Eliot, Geoffrey Hill, and John Heath-Stubbs (co-supervised with Divinity faculty); Michael Rizq, Form’s Philosophy: Poetry and Moral Thinking in Gerard Manley Hopkins, T.S. Eliot, and Geoffrey Hill; Sarah Weaver, Fossil Poetry: Tennyson and Victorian Philology; Adam Crothers, Paul Muldoon and the Place of Rhyme.
Connect with Michael
Publications
I am currently editing Volume 8 (Victorian Poetry) for the projected 14-volume Oxford University Press series The Oxford History of Poetry in English. A few volumes in the series have already been published; most, including mine, are in progress and forthcoming.
Books
Gold-Vermillion: The Life and Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins (London: Bloomsbury, under contract)
Angels and Monotheism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024)
Thinking Through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century. Co-edited and Introduced with Marcus Waithe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)
Faith in Poetry: Verse Style as a Mode of Religious Belief (London: Bloomsbury, 2017)
excerpt reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition of In Memoriam: Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ed. Erik Gray (W.W. Norton, 2020), pp. 269-278
G. K. Chesterton (Tavistock: Northcote House/British Council, 2012)
Poetic Form: an Introduction. Co-authored with Michael O'Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
The Complete Father Brown Stories. Edited and Introduced (London: Penguin Classics, 2012)
Journal Special Issue
'Reading the Times': John Henry Newman, Religion and Literature, 55.1 (Spring 2023). Co-edited and Introduced with Rebekah Lamb
Articles, Essays, Chapters
"The Fallacy of Equal Footing: Interdisciplinary Challenges for Religion and Literature", Literature and Belief, 45.1 (forthcoming)
"Is Poetry Divinely Inspired?", Religion and Literature, 56.2-3 (2025)
"The Shattered Majesty of Newman's Spontaneous Style", Religion and Literature, 55.1 (Spring 2023): 157-176.
"The Charge of God: Laudato Si read through Chesterton, Wordsworth, and Hopkins", Literature and Theology, 37.3 (2023): 216–240.
"Pater and Religion", in The Cambridge Companion to Walter Pater, ed. Francis O'Gorman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
"Sonnet", in Gerard Manley Hopkins in Context, ed. Marton Dubois (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
"Form, Matter, and Metaphysics, in Walter Pater's essay on 'Style'", in Walter Pater and the Beginnings of English Studies, ed. Charles Martindale, Lene Østermark-Johansen, and Elizabeth Prettejohn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).
"Style", in The Cambridge Companion to Prose, ed. Daniel Tyler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021).
"Wrestling with Gerard Manley Hopkins", Textual Practice, Volume 35, Issue 2 (2021): 921-940.
"The Fate of Angels in the Nineteenth Century", Religion and Literature 51.3-52.1 (2020): 5-18.
"Theologies of Inspiration: William Blake and Gerard M. Hopkins", in Constructing Nineteenth-Century Religion: Literary, Historical, and Religious Studies in Dialogue, ed. Joshua King and Winter Jade Werner (Ohio State University Press, 2019), Ch. 14.
"Sound", in William Blake in Context, ed. Sarah Haggarty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), Ch. 15.
"John Henry Newman, thinking out into language", in Thinking Through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), Ch. 6.
"Introduction: Thinking, Thinkers, Style, Stylists", co-written with Marcus Waithe, in Thinking Through Style: Non-Fiction Prose of the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
"Passion and Playfulness in the Letters of G. M. Hopkins", in Letter Writing Among Poets: from William Wordsworth to Elizabeth Bishop ed. Jonathan Ellis (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. 141-54.
"G. K. Chesterton", in Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature ed. Dino Felluga, Pamela K. Gilbert and Linda K. Hughes (New York: Blackwell, 2015)
"Rhythm", in The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Poetry ed. Matthew Bevis (Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 19-35.
"Why Chesterton Loved London", in G. K. Chesterton, London and Modernity ed. Matthew Beaumont and Matthew Ingleby (London: Continuum, 2013), pp. 15-34.
"On or about July 1877", in Victorian Transformations: Genre, Nationalism, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Literature ed. Bianca Tredennick (Ashgate, 2011), pp. 61-67.
"George Saintsbury's History of English Prosody', Essays in Criticism 60.4 (2010): 336-60.
"How Philosophers Trivialize Art: Bleak House, Oedipus Rex, 'Leda and the Swan'", Philosophy and Literature 33.1 (2009): 107-125.
"The Status of Poetry as an Aesthetic Object", Semiotica, Revue de l'Association Internationale de Semiotique 169.1/4 (2008): 71-92.
"Scansion", 4500-word entry in The Literary Encyclopedia (2008)
"The Pragmatics of Prosody", Style 41.1 (2007): 53-113.
"What Sprung Rhythm Really Is NOT", Hopkins Quarterly 33.3 (2006): 71-94.
"Interpreting Dante's Terza Rima", Forum for Modern Language Studies 43.3 (2005): 320-331.
"Darkening the Subject of Hopkins' Prosody", Victorian Poetry 43.4 (2005): 485-496.
"The Audible Reading of Poetry Revisited", British Journal of Aesthetics 44.4 (2004): 393-407.
Reviews
Richard Holmes, The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief. in The Critic. 20 December, 2025
Naomi Levine, The Burden of Rhyme: Victorian Poetry, Formalism, and the Feeling of Literary History. In The Review of English Studies (2025).
Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman. In British Catholic History 34.4 (2019): 675-678.
Paul Murray OP, God's Spies: Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Other Poets of Vision. In The Tablet. 27 April 2019
Reuven Tsur, Poetic Rhythm, Structure and Performance: an Empirical Study in Cognitive Poetics. In Cambridge Quarterly 43.4 (2014): 389-394.
Douglas Kerr, Conan Doyle: Writing, Profession and Practice. In Cambridge Quarterly 43.1 (2014): 60-66.
Meredith Martin, The Rise and Fall of Meter: Poetry and English National Culture, 1860-1930. In Victorian Review 39.2 (Fall 2013): 221-223.
Joseph Phelan, The Music of Verse, and Meter Matters ed. Jason Hall. In Cambridge Quarterly 42.1 (2013): 62-67.
Northrop Frye, Selected Letters, 1934-1991. In English 59.227 (2010): 99-102.
James I. Wimsatt, Hopkins's Poetics of Speech Sound. In Modern Philology 107.4 (2008): 126-130.
Colin Jager, The Book of God: Secularization and Design in the Romantic Era. In Times Literary Supplement 16.5.2008.
Angela Leighton, On Form: Poetry, Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word. In Cambridge Quarterly 36.3 (2008): 263-269.
Daniel Brown, Gerard Manley Hopkins. In Hopkins Quarterly 42.3-4 (2006): 63-67.
Al Alvarez, The Writer's Voice. In Times Literary Supplement 18.3.2005
Nicholas Boyle, Sacred and Secular Scriptures: A Catholic Approach to Literature. In Times Literary Supplement 2.11.2005
Alison Chapman, Richard Cronin and Anthony H. Harrison (eds.), A Companion to Victorian Poetry. In The Tennyson Research Bulletin 8.4 (2005): 304-306
Some examples of literary journalism on: Hopkins; Newman; Conan Doyle