Blair Hoxby

Blair Hoxby writes on the literature and culture of England, France, Italy, and Spain from 1500 to 1800. His recent research has focused on the theory and practice of tragedy during that period – which differed sharply from the idea of tragedy that most of us now take for granted. He also writes on the poetry and prose of John Milton, John Dryden, and their Augustan heirs. He teaches English poetry from the Renaissance to Romanticism, tragedy and tragic theory from Aristotle to the present, theater history, and performance theory.
He is the author of What Was Tragedy? Theory and the Early Modern Canon (Oxford: OUP, 2015) and Mammon’s Music: Literature and Economics in the Age of Milton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002). He is the editor of Milton in the Long Restoration (Oxford: OUP, May 2016), a collection of twenty-nine original essays that analyze the way authors writing from 1650 to 1750 interpreted, imitated, and parodied Milton.
Recent selected articles include:
■ “Technologies of Performance,” in A Cultural History of Theatre, ed. Chris and Tracy Davis. Vol 3, The Renaissance, ed. Robert Henke. London: Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2017.
■ Politics and Aesthetics in European Baroque and Classicist Tragedy, ed. Jan Bloemendal and Nigel Smith. Leiden: Brill, forthcoming.
■ “The Richardsons, the Sublime, and the Invention of Aesthetic Theory,” in Milton in the Long Restoration, ed. with Ann Baynes Coiro. Oxford: OUP, forthcoming May 2016.
■ “Passions,” in 21st-Century Approaches: Early Modern Theatricality, ed. Henry Turner. New York: OUP, 2013.
■ “What Was Tragedy? The World We Have Lost, 1550-1795,” Comparative Literature 64 (2012): 1-32.
■ “Allegorical Drama,” in The Cambridge Companion to Allegory, ed. Rita Copeland and Peter Struck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
■ “The Function of Allegory in Baroque Tragic Drama: What Benjamin Got Wrong,” in Thinking Allegory Otherwise, ed. Brenda Machowsky. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
■ "Areopagitica and Liberty," in The Oxford Handbook of Milton, ed. Nicholas McDowell and Nigel Smith. Oxford: OUP, 2009.
■ "All Passion Spent: The Means and Ends of a Tragédie en Musique," Comparative Literature 59 (2007): 33-62.
■ "The Wisdom of Their Feet: Meaningful Dance in Milton and the Stuart Masque," English Literary Renaissance 37.1 (2007): 74-99.
Publications
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Office Hours
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Courses
Winter 2023-2024
Intro to English II: From Milton to the Romantics
Baroque Tragedy
Autumn 2023-2024
Intro to English I: Love and Death from Chaucer to Milton
Sex and Violence in Jacobean Tragedy
Winter 2022-2023
The Renaissance in Europe
From Milton to the Romantics
Autumn 2022-2023
Love and Death from Chaucer to Milton
Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Critics
Winter 2020-20201
Introduction to English II: From Milton to the Romantics
Humanities Core: The Renaissance in Europe
Autumn 2020-2021
Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Critics
Theatrical Wonders from Shakespeare to Mozart
Autumn 2019-2020
Theatrical Wonders from Shakespeare to Mozart
Shakespeare and the History Play
Winter 2019-2020
Shakespeare and the History Play
Autumn 2018-2019
Drama and Aesthetics, Shakepeare to Schiller
Winter 2017-2018
Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance (DLCL 12, FRENCH 12, HUMCORE 12)
Autumn 2017-2018
Shakespearean Tragedy and Its Critics