Chris Townsend

Dr. Chris Townsend is a Research Fellow at the School of English, University of St Andrews, since September 2023. He previously held a visiting Fleeman Fellowship at the same institution in 2018. Dr. Townsend earned his B.A. from the University of Exeter and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he also taught for four years.

Research Interests:

• Eighteenth-century and Romantic literature
• Poetic form in British abolitionist poetry, focusing on the heroic couplet and anapaestic tetrameter
• Poetic 'semblance' as a critique of truth vs. appearance
• Intersections of poetry and commerce, including poetry as a commodity
• George Berkeley’s philosophical influence on Romantic poets like Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley

Key Research Outputs analyze the role of rhyme in critiquing misogyny (Rossetti, Dickinson, Plath), the use of blank verse in abolitionist works (Cowper), and the philosophical underpinnings of Romantic poetics. He is currently working on a book about poetry’s role in the British abolitionism movement.