William James Simpson
William James Simpson (born 16 March 1954, Melbourne) is an Australian-American medievalist.
Education
- Educated at Scotch College (1966–1971)
- Arts Degree with Honours at Melbourne University, Melbourne (1976)
- Master of Philosophy, University of Oxford 1980
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Cambridge (1996)
Career
Simpson has worked in academia in Australia, the UK, and the USA, where he has taught medieval Literature. He was a Fellow and College Lecturer at Girton College (1989–1999), a professor at the University of Cambridge (1999–2003), before accepting an appointment at Harvard University, where since 2006 he is the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English.[1]
Awards
- Silver Medal, Independent Publisher Book Awards - Religion category (2008)
- British Academy Sir Israel Gollancz Prize - Reform and Cultural Revolution (2007)
- Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (2003)
- John Hurt Fisher Prize - “Significant Contribution to the Field of John Gower Studies,” John Gower Society (2003)
- Jane Herbert Memorial Fellowship, Westfield College, University of London (1987)
- Paget Toynbee Dante Alighieri Prize, Oxford University (1980)
Work
His early work centred on literary analysis of poetry, especially the late 14th century English poem, Piers Plowman.[2] He later worked on Medieval Humanism. In 2002, he published an award winning literary history.[3] His most recent work, "Burning to Read"[4] centres on the fundamentalist Bible reading in the early 16th century.
Works
Author
- Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990)
- Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower’s “Confessio amantis”, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
- Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547, Vol 2 of The Oxford English Literary History (Oxford University Press, 2002)
- Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, second, revised edition (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2007)
- Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)
- Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press USA, 2011)
- Reynard the Fox: A New Translation (2015)
Editor
- The Norton Anthology of English Literature, General Editors Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams; “The Middle Ages”, ed. Alfred David and James Simpson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 1-484
- John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)]
- Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xiv + 250 pp. 2005]
- Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986, 250 pp. 133–153
References
- ↑ English: Graduate & alumni profiles - Melbourne University
- ↑ Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1 (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990)
- ↑ "The Oxford English Literary History: 1350-1547 : reform and cultural revolution".
- ↑ "Burning to Read".