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James Simpson

Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English

Barker Center | 12 Quincy Street | Cambridge, MA 02138

James Simpson
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    James Simpson is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University (2004-). He was formerly based at the University of Cambridge, where he was a University Lecturer in English (1989-1999) and Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English (1999-2003). He is a Life Fellow of Girton College and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

    Prof. Simpson was educated at Scotch College Melbourne, Melbourne University (BA) and the University of Oxford (MPhil). He holds a doctorate from the University of Cambridge. His books include: Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (Longman, 1990) (second, revised edition, 2007); Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1995); Reform and Cultural Revolution, volume 2 in the Oxford English Literary History (Oxford University Press, 2002) (winner of the British Academy Sir Israel Gollancz Prize, 2007); Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Harvard University Press, 2007); Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press, 2010); and Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2019). His translation of Reynard the Fox was recently published by Liveright (2015).


    Education:
    B.A. 1976 University of Melbourne
    M. Phil. 1980 University of Oxford
    M. Phil. 1995 University of Cambridge (by incorporation)
    Ph.D. 1996 University of Cambridge
    M.A. 2004 Harvard University (by incorporation)
     
    Interests:

    Late medieval and early modern Western European Literature, 1150-1690; the cultural disciplines of revolutionary evangelical modernity, and how we survived them.

Click to Read Recent Articles by James Simpson

  • The Unintended Reformation

    Brad Gregory's Unintended Revelations

    from the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Vol. 46 (2016)

  • David Playing the Harp Before Saul

    The Psalms and Threat in Sixteenth-Century English Court Culture

    from Renaissance Studies, September 2015, Vol. 29, Issue 4

  • The Reformation of Scholarship: A Reply to Debora Shuger

    originally published in The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Vol. 42 (2012)

  • Religious Forms and Institutions in "Piers Plowman"

    from The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman, edited by Andrew Cole and Andy Galloway

  • Killing Authors: Skelton's Dreadful Bouge of Court

    from Form and Reform: Reading the Fifteenth Century, edited by Kathleen Tonry and Shannon Gayk

  • Mapping the Future

    The Teaching of the Arts and Humanities at Harvard College

  • Iconoclasm and the Enlightenment Museum

    from "Striking Images, Iconoclasms Past and Present", edited by Stacy Boldrick, Leslie Brubaker, and Richard Clay

Recent Titles

Hardyng Cover

Reynard the Fox

Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry

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