Email: a.hiscock@bangor.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0)1248 382563

Room: 404, New Arts

Professor Hiscock is Professor of English Literature, Dean of Postgraduate Research and Head of the university's Doctoral School. He has been Head of the School of English Literature, Deputy Dean and Director of the Graduate School for the College of Arts and Humanities during his career at Bangor University.

He was awarded an AHRC Research Fellowship for 2011-12 and was also the recipient of the Ben Jonson Discoveries Award in 2014. He was Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the Institut de Recherche sur la Renaissance, l'Age Classique et les Lumières, Université Paul-Valéry, Montpellier III from 2016-18 and has been appointed as a Research Fellow to the Institute. For further détails, consult the project webpage.

Teaching:

Early modern literature, most particularly the development of dramatic writing, sixteenth-century lyric poetry and women's writing. In addition, I have research interests in Medieval drama and Canadian literature. I am interested in supervising postgraduate projects linked to any areas of the above, especially where connected to questions surrounding the cultural/textual representations of: memory, violence, travel and changing concepts of Europe.

Research profile:

My research profile has always been interdisciplinary in nature, focusing most particularly upon developments in English and French early modern literature. Whilst I have published widely across genres and authors from the late fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century, the centre of gravity for my research has remained the dramatic literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. My doctoral research was a comparative literary project exploring political representation in the drama of Shakespeare and Racine and was published as a monograph, Authority and Desire. Crises of Interpretation in Shakespeare and Racine (1996). My monograph The Uses of this World: Thinking Space in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary and Jonson paid particular attention to competing cultural constructions of space in a variety of dramatic texts from the English Renaissance. I edited the double issue of the MHRA's 2008 Yearbook of English Studies devoted to Tudor literature and completed an extensive account of the early modern period for Cambridge University Press's English Literature in Context, edited by Paul Poplawski. I am co-editor with Lisa Hopkins of the Arden Early Modern Drama Guides series, and was co-editor with Helen Wilcox of the English Association's academic journal English, published by Oxford University Press from 2008 to 2011. I am now the Editor (English & American Literature) for the academic journal MLR and series editor for the Yearbook of English Studies.

My monograph Reading Memory in Early Modern Literature focuses upon the development of cultural debate surrounding the status and function of memory in the period 1520-1620. The project includes studies of such diverse writers as Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Katherine Parr, John Foxe, Edmund Spenser, Thomas Nashe, Mary Sidney, William Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson and John Donne.

My most recent monograph, Shakespeare, Violence and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2022), is designed to broaden understanding of the final years of the last Tudor monarch, revealing the truly international context in which they must be understood. Uncovering the extent to which Shakespeare's dramatic art intersected with European politics, this project brings together close readings of the history plays, insights into late Elizabethan political culture and renewed attention to neglected continental accounts of Elizabeth I. The project as a whole charts the profound influence that Shakespeare and ambitious courtiers had upon succeeding generations of European writers, dramatists and audiences following the turn of the sixteenth century. Informed by early modern and contemporary cultural debate, this study demonstrates how the study of early modern violence can illuminate ongoing crises of interpretation concerning brutality, victimization and complicity in contemporary society.

Major publications:

Monographs

• Shakespeare, Violence and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2022).
• Reading Memory in Early Modern Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
• The Uses of this World: Thinking Space in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Cary and Jonson (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004)
• Authority and Desire: Crises of Interpretation in Shakespeare and Racine (New York: Lang, 1996).

Edited Collections

• Middleton: Women Beware Women (London: Bloomsbury/Arden, 2011).
• Yearbook of English Studies 2008: Tudor Literature 38:1/2 (MHRA, 2008).
• Mighty Europe: the Writing of an Early Modern Continent (New York: Lang, 2007).

Co-edited Collections

• (with Helen Wilcox) The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion (Oxford: OUP, 2017).
• (with Lina Perkins Wilder) The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Memory (London: Routledge, 2017).
• (with Lisa Hopkins) Shakespeare: King Lear (London: Continuum/Arden, 2011).
• (with Stephen Longstaffe) The Shakespeare Handbook(London/New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).
• (with Lisa Hopkins) Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Dramatists (Basingstoke:  English Subject Centre/Palgrave, 2007).
• (with Katie Gramich) Dangerous Diversity: the Changing Faces of Wales from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998).

Current Support for Others' Research

• 2013 - Member of Comité Scientifique/Advisory Board of International Conference 21–22 June 2013 'Women and Curiosity in Early Modern England' - Université Paris Ouest Nanterre (Quarto, CREA370) & Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 (Épistémè, PRISMES EA4398)
• Editor (English & American Literature) MLR and Yearbook of English Studies

• Member of AHRC Peer Review College (Academic & International)
• Co-convenor for 8th International ESRA (European Shakespeare Research Association) Conference at University of Pisa 2009
• Co-editor of English, the journal of the English Association, 2008-11.
• Co-editor of the Arden early Modern Drama Guide series
• Guest editor, Modern Humanities Research Association Yearbook of English Studies 2008 devoted to Tudor Literature
• Visiting Socrates Scholar at Scuole Civiche in Milan
• Visiting Socrates Scholar at University of Pescara, Italy
• Book Reviews Editor, Renaissance Studies, 2003-2007
• Chapter editor of 'Shakespeare's Poetry', Year's Work in English, 1998-2002  

Peer recognition

• 2014  - Appointed member ofComité Scientifique of Etudes Epistémè
• 2013  - AHRC Early Career Researcher mentor
• 2013  - appointed to the Comitato Scientifico/Advisory Board of the academic press Aracne Editrice (Rome)
• 2013 - Member of Comité Scientifique/Advisory Board of online journal of Arrêt Sur Scène/Scene Focus
• 2012 - Appointed Fellow of the English Association
• 2011-2012 - AHRC Research Fellow
• 2011 - 2011 Speaker for Annual Partnership Lecture at Montpellier sponsored by the University of Montpellier and Society for Renaissance Studies.
• 2011 – Appointed to the Board of Trustees for the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA)
• 2010 – Invited member of AHRC Strategic Review Group
• 2010 – 2013 - Elected as Welsh Representative to Council of the Society of Renaissance Studies
• 2008   Elected to the Board of Trustees for the British Shakespeare Association
• 2006 - Canadian High Commission, working party on recruitment and organisation of Canadianists in U.K.
• 2003 -  Editorial board member of e-Colloquia (2003-)
• 2003- Council member for 'Society for Renaissance Studies' (2003-2013)
• 2002 - Assessor for research scholarships in Canada, Canadian High Commission in London

Book Chapters & Journal Articles

‘“speak what terrible language you will”: fooling with the Other in Shakespeare’s All's Well That Ends Well’ (forthcoming, Arrêt sur scène/Scene Focus 10 (2021), 53-62.

‘“Of all these bounds, even from this line to this”: Shakespeare and his World testing us to our very limits’, Shakespeare Studies 48 (2020), 180-200.

‘Moving Shakespeare: la danse narrative and adapting to the Bard’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, 102.1 (2020), 18-37.

‘“Lay by thine Armes and take the Citie then”: Soldiering and the City in the drama of Thomas Middleton’, in Matthew Woodcock and Cian O’Mahoney (eds.), Early Modern Military Identities 1560-1639 (Boydell & Brewer, 2019), pp. 235-55.

‘“englishing th’Italian Ariost”: Orlando Furioso among the Elizabethans. Adaptation and Audience’ in Ariosto, the Orlando furioso and English Culture 1516-2016 (see above, 2019).

“‘Come, now a roundel and a fairy song’: Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the early modern invitation to the dance”' Cahiers Elisabéthains 97.1 (2018), 39-68.

‘“yet not past sense”: Walter Ralegh, Mary Wroth and the pleasure principles of the body’, Epistemè34 (2019) - https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/3243)

‘“You are welcome to your country”: initiation and re‐encounter in the dramatic world of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi’, Arrêt sur scène/Scene Focus 7 (2018) http://www.ircl.cnrs.fr/productions%20electroniques/arret_scene/7_2018/ASF7_2018_02_hiscock.pdf.

‘“In such a whisp’ring and withdrawing hour”: Speaking solus in Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy and The Lady's Tragedy', in A.D. Cousins & D. Derrin (eds), Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018), pp. 167-179.

'Debating early modern and modern memory: Cultural forms and effects. A critical retrospective', Memory Studies 11.1 (Jan 2018), 69-84.

'"Shakspeare, s'avançant": A Bard, the Nineteenth Century and a Tale of Two Cities' Theatres', Shakespeare 13 (Dec 2017), 4, 333-50.

'"Enter Macduffe, with Macbeths head": Shakespeare's Macbeth and the Staging of Trauma', in Sarah Dustagheer and Gillian Woods (eds.), Stage Directions and Shakespearean Theatre (London: Bloomsbury/Arden Shakespeare, 2018), pp. 241-61.

"Suppose thou dost defend me from what is past": Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece and the appetite for ancient memory', in Hiscock & Wilder, The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Memory (see above), pp. 281-96.

"What England has to offer": Erasmus, Colet, More and their Circle', in Hiscock & Wilcox, The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern English Literature and Religion (see above), pp. 261-78.

'The Interlude', in Pamela M. King (ed.), The Routledge Research Companion to Early Drama and Performance (London/New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 237-58.

"Cut my heart in sums": Community-making and –breaking in the prodigal drama of Thomas Middleton', in Roger D. Sell, Anthony W. Johnson and Helen Wilcox (eds.), Community-Making in Early Stuart Theatres (London: Routledge, 2017), pp.311-37.

"Will You Walk In, My Lord?": Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and the Anxiety of Oikos', in David B. Goldstein and Julia Reinhard Lupton (eds.), Shakespeare and Hospitality. Ethics, Politics, and Exchange (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 17-38.

"Man is a Battlefield within Himself": Arms and the Affections in the Counsel of More, Erasmus, Vives, and their Circle', in Stephanie Downes, Andrew Lynch & Katrina O'Loughlin (eds.), Emotions and War. Medieval to Romantic Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave/MacMillan, 2015), 152-68.

'"Fruit of that monst'rous night!": Le théâtre anglais 1660-1760 et les plaisirs de la nuit', Arrêt sur Scène/Scene Focus, 4 (2015), 33-48.

'"O, Tom Thumb! Tom Thumb! Wherefore art thou Tom Thumb?": Early Modern Drama and the Eighteenth-century Writer - Henry Fielding and Fanny Burney', The Ben Jonson Journal 21.2 (2014), 228-63. Winner of the 2014 Ben Jonson Discoveries Award.

'"L'immortel Chancelier d'Angleterre" : Francis Bacon, Memory and Method/Francis Bacon, mémoire et méthode', Revue LISA – Littératures, Histoires des Idées, Images et Sociétés du Monde Anglophone, vol. XII-no 5 (2014): Les Discours de la Méthode en Angleterre à l'Époque Classique.

'Achilles alter: the heroic lives and afterlives of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex', in Annaliese Connolly & Lisa Hopkins (eds.), Essex. The Cultural Impact of an Elizabethan Courtier (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013).

"Tryfyls, Toys, Mokkes, Fables and Nyfyls": the Government of Fools and Fabliaux in Johan Johan (1533)', Yearbook of English Studies (2013) 43, 299-317.

'"Most fond and fruitlesse warre": Ralegh and the call to arms', in Christopher M. Armitage (ed.), Literary and Visual Ralegh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), pp. 257-283.

'Shakespeare and the fortunes of war and memory', Actes des congrès de la Société française Shakespeare, 30, 2013, 11-26.

'Johan Johan (1533): The Politics of Marriage and Folly in Henrician England', Theta X: Théâtre Tudor (2013), 97-116.

'Pericles, Prince of Tyre and the Appetite for Narrative', in Andrew J. Power & Rory Loughnane (eds.), Late Shakespeare, 1608-1613 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

'Shakespeare and Gender', in Arthur F. Kinney (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)

'"More warlike than politique": Shakespeare and the Theatre of War – A Critical Survey', Shakespeare, 7, 2, 2011, 221-247.

'"whether the Macedonian, or the Roman, were the best Warriour": Sir Walter Ralegh and the Conflicts of Antiquity', in Marco Formisano & Hartmut Böhme (eds.), War and Words. Transformations of War from Antiquity to Clausewitz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011).

'"what learne you by that?": Spain, Shakespeare and the Anxiety of Romance', in Clive Bellis & J. M. Gonzalez (eds.), Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Rabelais: New Interpretations and Comparative Studies(New York: Mellen Press, 2011).

'"Provide for the Future, and Times Succeeding": Walter Ralegh and the Progress of Time', in Brady, Andrea & Emily Butterworth (eds.), The Uses of the Future in Early Modern Europe (London: Routledge, 2010).

'"Hear my Tale, or Kiss my Tail!": The Popular Cultures of Tudor Comedy', in Pincombe, Michael & Cathy Shrank (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

'La Dolente Clorinde? Mary Sidney, comtesse de Pembroke, et la vocation de la mémoire', in Dubois-Nayt, Armel et al. (eds.), Le Mythe et la Plume: L'ecriture et les femmes en Grande Bretagne (1540-1640) (Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 2008).

'"writers to solemnise and celebrate… Actes and memory": Foxe and the Business of Textual Memory', Yearbook of English Studies 2008: Tudor Literature 38:1/2 (MHRA, 2008), 68-85.

'Barking Dogs and Christian Men: Ralegh and Barbarism', in Almási, Zsolt and Michael Pincombe (eds.), Writing the Other: Humanism versus Barbarism in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2008).

'1485-1660: The Renaissance', in Poplawski, Paul (ed.),  English Literature in Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

'Walter Ralegh and the Arts of Memory', Literature Compass, vol. 4, issue 4, July 2007, 1030-1058.

'Dialogue between Old England and New: Constructs of Memory in the Poetry of Anne Bradstreet', in Hiscock, Andrew (ed.), Mighty Europe: the Writing of an Early Modern Continent (New York: Lang, 2007).

'"This art of memory": Francis Bacon, Memory and the Discourses of Power', in Kamel, Salwa Abdel-Aziz (ed.), Power and the Role of the Intellectual (Cairo University Press, 2006)

'What's Hecuba to him. ..?: Memory, Text and Rhetorical Selves in Shakespeare's Hamlet', in Shepard, Alan & Stephen D. Powell (eds.),  Fantasies of Troy. Classical Tales and the Social Imaginary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies/University of Toronto Press, 2004).

'"Blabbing leaves of betraying paper": Configuring the Past in George Gascoigne's The Adventures of Master F.J., Thomas Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller & Thomas Deloney's Jack of Newbury', English, 52, 202, Spring 2003, 1-20.

'A supernal, liuely fayth: Katherine Parr and the Authoring of Devotion', Women's Writing, 9, 2, 2002, 177-98.

'Retiring from the Popular Noise: the Nation and its Fugitive Images in Milton's Samson Agonistes', English, 50, 197, Summer 2001, 89-110.

'"To seke the place where I my self hadd lost": Acts of Memory in the Poetry of Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey', in Pincombe, Michael (ed.), The Anatomy of Tudor Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001).

'Passionate Imperialism: the Politics of Desire in Behn's Abdelazer and Racine's Bajazet', in D'haen, Theo & Patricia Krüs (eds.), Colonizer and Colonized (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000).

'Enclosing infinite riches in a little room: the question of cultural marginality in Marlowe's The Jew of Malta', Forum, XXXV, 1, January 1999, 1-22.

'Here is my Space: the Politics of Appropriation in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra', English, 47, 189, Autumn 1998, 187-212.

'To the Honour of that Nation: Ben Jonson and the Masquing of Wales' in Gramich, Katie & Andrew Hiscock, Dangerous Diversity: the Changing Faces of Wales from the Renaissance to the Present Day (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1998).

'Erotic Sovereignty: Crises of Desire and Faith in The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII', Cahiers Elisabéthains, 52, October 1997, 53-62.

'The hateful cuckoo: Elizabeth Cary's Tragedie of Mariam, a Renaissance drama of Dispossession', Forum, XXXIII, 2, April 1997, 97-114.

'Here's no design, no plot, nor any ground: Margaret Cavendish and the drama of the Disorderly Woman', Women's Writing, 4, 3, 1997, 401-20.

'"'Tis there eternal Spring": Mapping the Exotic in Aphra Behn's Oroonoko', Journal of the Short Story, 29, Autumn 1997, 2-16.

Early modern literature (late 15c-17c): most particularly the development of dramatic writing, sixteenth-century lyric poetry and women's writing.

Comparative Literature: most particularly comparisons of French, Italian and British writing in the early modern period.

I also have research interests in: Medieval drama; Canadian literature.

I am interested in supervising postgraduate projects linked to any areas of the above, especially where connected to questions surrounding the cultural/textual representations of: memory, violence, travel and changing concepts of Europe.