معرفی
Sophie Read serves as Senior Lecturer in English Literature (1640-1730) at the University of Cambridge's Faculty of English, where she has held a fellowship and tutorship at Christ's College since 2006. She directs Part II studies and teaches Practical Criticism, Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and Tragedy courses.
Her research spans seventeenth-century devotional poetry, Renaissance rhetoric (particularly wordplay), poetics & cognitive linguistics, literary representations of the senses (with special focus on smell), and contemporary Cambridge-school poetry. Her work examines intersections between literature and religion, rhetorical constructs, and sensory experiences in early modern texts.
Read's publications reveal consistent engagement with theological dimensions of poetry and sensory rhetoric. Her monograph Eucharist and the Poetic Imagination in Early Modern England (2013) established foundational work on sacramental poetics, while her current project Speaking Sweet: Renaissance Rhetorics of Smell extends this into olfactory studies. Recent scholarship demonstrates her dual expertise in historical contexts (Renaissance/Reformation) and modern poetic traditions.
Her editorial work includes the forthcoming Western Literature and the Bible, Vol 2: The Renaissance and The Bible and Western Christian Literature: Books and The Book (2024). She has published extensively on figures ranging from Lancelot Andrewes and George Herbert to contemporary poets like Veronica Forrest-Thomson and Ian Patterson.
Based in Cambridge with her family and cat Pushkin, Read maintains active scholarly engagement through publications in Cambridge Quarterly, John Donne Journal, and Oxford University Press collections while contributing to the vibrant intellectual community at Christ's College.
