معرفی
Dr James Robinson serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University. He joined the department as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in 2013 and has been teaching there continuously since that time. His academic position places him within one of the UK's leading institutions for literary studies, contributing to both undergraduate and postgraduate education in English literature.
Robinson's research spans multiple literary periods and traditions, with a particular focus on the intersections between medieval and twentieth-century literature. His expertise encompasses James Joyce studies, Ted Hughes scholarship, and Dante Alighieri reception, examining how medieval literary traditions have influenced modern and contemporary writers. His work demonstrates how poets like Ted Hughes engaged with medieval English, European, and Persian poetries, particularly through the lens of Hughes's regional identity as a Northern-English poet. Robinson's research methodology combines historical analysis with close textual reading and extensive archival research, resulting in significant contributions to our understanding of literary influence across centuries.
His publication record reveals a consistent focus on the relationship between medieval literary traditions and modernist writing, with particular emphasis on Dante's influence on James Joyce and Ted Hughes. The trajectory of his scholarship shows increasing sophistication in tracing intertextual connections across different literary periods, with recent work expanding from Joyce-Dante connections to broader examinations of medieval influences on twentieth-century poetry. His research demonstrates how medieval literary forms continue to shape contemporary poetic practice.
As an educator, Robinson convenes the second-year seminar module 'Modern Poetry' and actively supervises PhD students. His teaching reflects his research interests, covering twentieth-century literature, medieval literature, Romanticism, and poetry and poetics more widely. He welcomes prospective research students interested in working on Joyce, Hughes, Dante, British and Irish poetry, twentieth-century literature, or the afterlife of medieval literatures.
