Richard Hillyer

Richard Hillyer is Professor of English at the University of South Alabama’s College of Arts and Sciences, where he specializes in Renaissance and Augustan literature and poetry. His office is located in Humanities 278, and he can be reached at rhillyer@southalabama.edu.

His research spans the long eighteenth century, with particular attention to intersections of science, philosophy, and poetic form. Recent monographs include Four Augustan Science Poets (2020), which examines how Cowley, Thomson, Brooke, and Darwin negotiated the languages of poetry and emerging scientific discourse, and Auden’s Syllabic Verse (2019), a comprehensive study of Auden’s formal innovations in syllabic meter. Earlier books investigate concepts of care across culture and history (2013), Sir Philip Sidney’s reception as a cultural icon (2010), and the intellectual traffic between Thomas Hobbes and his poetic contemporaries (2007).

Across dozens of articles and book chapters, Hillyer has illuminated topics ranging from neoclassical distichs to Restoration manuscript circulation, Hobbesian fable theory, and the poetics of W. H. Auden. This body of work reveals a consistent preoccupation with how poetic form mediates philosophical, scientific, and religious ideas in early modern and modern contexts.

Labs, teams, and affiliations: Professor Hillyer is a core faculty member in the USA English Department, contributing to both the undergraduate and graduate curricula; no specific research center or laboratory is mentioned in the provided material.