Peter Milward

Father Peter Milward, SJ
Born Peter Christopher Milward
12 October 1925
London, England
Occupation Jesuit priest; academic, educator and scholar
Nationality British
Period 20th century

Father Peter Milward, SJ (born 12 October 1925)[1] is a Jesuit priest and literary scholar. He is emeritus professor of English Literature at Sophia University in Tokyo and a leading figure in scholarship on English Renaissance literature. He has been chair of the Renaissance Institute at Sophia University since its inception in 1974 and director of the Renaissance Centre since its start in 1984. He has primarily published on the works of William Shakespeare[2] and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Life

Education

Born in London in 1925, Milward was educated at Wimbledon College, entering the Society of Jesus in 1943 at the age of 18. He went on to study Classics and English Literature in Heythrop College and Campion Hall, Oxford. In Oxford he made a point of attending the lectures of C. S. Lewis and the meetings of the Socratic Club. In 1954 he was sent to Japan, where he learnt the Japanese language and completed his study of Theology. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1960.

Academic career

Milward joined the Department of English Literature at Sophia University in 1962. In time he became vice-chairman of the Renaissance Institute at Sophia University, and editor of the Institute's Renaissance Monographs. He was the first director of the university's Renaissance Centre, opened in 1984. Since retirement he has continued to provide lectures at the Renaissance Centre. He is best known in Japan as the author of a series of readers and textbooks for the study of the English language and English literature, and as an essayist on comparative culture.

Outside Japan, he is best known to academics as a specialist in Renaissance literature who, largely on the basis of research in the Huntington Library, compiled two fundamental aids for the study of religion in early modern England: Religious Controversies of the Elizabethan Age (1977) and Religious Controversies of the Jacobean Age (1978). Milward was also a book reviewer for Monumenta Nipponica. Since retirement he has been one of the leading proponents of the view that Shakespeare was a crypto-Catholic. He writes regularly for the St. Austin Review.

Select list of publications


As author

General works

On Renaissance literature

On modern literature

As editor

Literary volumes

Academic volumes

References

  1. Genesis of an Octogenarian Peter Milward's autobiography (2008); accessed 4 November 2011.
  2. Checklist of Milward's work on Shakespeare (through 2005) on Boston College website; accessed 4 November 2011.
  3. Reviewed in The Modern Language Review 69:4 (1974), pp. 842–843; The Review of English Studies. New Series, vol. 26, no. 103 (1975), pp. 331–333; Shakespeare Quarterly 26:2 (1975), pp. 218–222.
  4. Reviewed in Renaissance Quarterly 32:1 (1979), pp. 106–108; Sixteenth Century Journal 10:2 (1979), p. 114; Shakespeare Quarterly 30:1 (1979), pp. 121–124.

External links

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