English and Creative Writing

Photo of Professor Philip Schwyzer

Professor Philip Schwyzer

Professor

P.A.Schwyzer@exeter.ac.uk

4268

01392 724268

Overview

Philip Schwyzer is a specialist in early modern English literature, with interests including William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and the literature of personal and cultural memory. Much of his research happens on borders and boundaries, including those between the Middle Ages and the early modern period, between literature and archaeology, and between England and Wales. His books include Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III (2013), Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature (2007), and Literature, Nationalism, and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (2004).

He is Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded research project Inventor of Britain: The Complete Works of Humphrey Llwyd. Other recent projects include Deploying the Dead (DEEPDEAD), funded by HERA, and the Past in its Place Project, funded by the ERC. He is editing Michael Drayton’s great topographical and historical poem, Poly-Olbion, with Professor Andrew McRae, and was Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded Poly-Olbion Project.

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Research

    • Shakespeare
    • Spenser
    • early modern English and Welsh literature
    • death and memory
    • national identities
    • archaeology and antiquarianism

My research interests tend to cluster around borders and boundaries - between nations, between periods, and between disciplines. Much of my work has focused on cultural and literary relations between the nations of Britain, particularly England and Wales. I’ve also sought in various ways to bridge the gap between ‘late medieval' and ‘early modern'. I find myself increasingly interested in the intersection of literary and material cultures, especially as vehicles for the expression and preservation of cultural memory.

My first book, Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales (Cambridge, 2004) explored the emergence of national consciousness in the Tudor era. My ongoing concern with the ‘British problem' in early modern literature is also expressed in two co-edited collections, Archipelagic Identities (Ashgate, 2004) and Shakespeare and Wales (Ashgate, 2010), and in my edition of Humphrey Llwyd’s Breviary of Britain (MHRA, 2011).

In Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature (Oxford, 2007), I set out to uncover some buried affinities between the disciplines of archaeology and literary criticism, as well as exploring a range of archaeological motifs – from miraculously preserved corpses and Egyptian mummies to ruined monasteries and Yorick's skull – in a series of late medieval and early modern texts.  Since then I have remained fascinated by the “matter” of memory, and of literature. Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III (Oxford, 2013) explores how recollections and material traces of Richard III's reign survived over the course of a century to influence the world and work of William Shakespeare. 



Research collaborations

I am Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded project "Inventor of Britain" (2017-20). In collaboration with co-investigators at Bangor and QUB, and with the National Library of Wales, the project will culiminate in a scholarly edition of the complete works of the sixteenth-century Welsh historian and cartographer Humphrey Llwyd, as well as interactive digital editions of his innovative and influential maps.

I was also a Principal Investigator and overall Project Leader for the HERA-funded project "Deploying the Dead: Artefacts and Human Bodies in Socio-Cultural Transformations" (DEEPDEAD, 2016-19). In collaboration with teams in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Germany, the DEEPDEAD project examined the political uses and cultural meanings of human remains and related artefacts, from prehistory to the present. The UK team explored cases ranging from the relics of medieval saints and the supposed discovery of the bones of King Arthur in the twelfth century, to the recent discovery and reburial of the remains of Richard III.

From 2012 to 2016 I led a large-scale collaborative project called “The Past in its Place," which set out to explore how a range of English and Welsh locales (including cathedrals, ancient habitations, and landscapes) have functioned as sites of memory from the middle ages to the modern era. This project is funded by the European Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust. The research team includes ten academics representing the fields of English Studies, History, Geography, and Archaeology, from the Universities of Exeter and Chester.  A strand of this project, "Speaking with the Dead: Histories of Memory in Sacred Space", involving collaboration with cathedrals including Canterbury, Chester, Exeter, St Albans and St Davids, was featured in public exhibitions at several of these cathedrals in 2014. 

I have also collaborated with Professor Andrew McRae, Dr. Daniel Cattell, and Dr. Sjoerd Levelt in AHRC-funded The Poly-Olbion Project, which will culminate in a scholarly edition of Michael Drayton's Poly-Olbion, including the intriguing and erudite annotations of John Selden. The project mounted an exhibition and conference at the Royal Geographical Society in 2015, leading to a forthcoming volume of essays on Poly-Olbion and the mapping of early modern Britain.

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Supervision

I always welcome inquiries from potential research students.  In recent years I have supervised doctoral dissertations on subjects including Shakespeare and the Jacobean court; Shakespeare and memory; Shakespeare and possible worlds theory; death and the uncanny in Renaissance drama; the representation of Turks and Moors in Renaissance drama; and the representation of Boudica in early modern English literature. Some of my former students now teach at universities in countries including Britain, France, China, and Egypt.

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Publications

Copyright Notice: Any articles made available for download are for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the copyright holder.

| 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2002 | 2001 | 1999 | 1997 |

2022

2021

  • Schwyzer P. (2021) Shakespearean Exhumations: Richard III, The Princes in the Tower, and the Prehistoric Romeo and Juliet, Interdisciplinary Explorations of Postmortem Agency: The Uses of Dead Bodies, Funerary Objects, and Burial Spaces through Time.

2020

  • Cattell D, Schwyzer P. (2020) Introduction: visions of Britain, Imagining the Nation in Seventeenth-Century English Literature, Taylor & Francis, 1-15, DOI:10.4324/9781003052388-1.
  • Schwyzer P. (2020) ‘Monuments of Our Indignation’: John Milton and the Reception of Reformation Iconoclasm in the Seventeenth Century, Memory and the English Reformation, Cambridge University Press, 238-253.
  • Schwyzer P. (2020) The Politics of British Antiquity and the Descent from Troy in the Early Stuart Era, Celts, Romans, Britons: Classical and Celtic Influence in the Construction of British Identities, Oxford University Press, 79-79.
  • McRae A. (2020) Poly-Olbion: New Perspectives, D. S. Brewer.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2020) Arthur and the Tudor Dynasty, Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism, OUP.

2019

  • Schwyzer PA. (2019) Exhibition at National Library of Wales.

2018

2017

2016

  • Schwyzer PA. (2016) Most out of Order: Preposterous Time in the Mirror for Magistrates and Shakespeare’s Histories, A Mirror for Magistrates in Context, Cambridge University Press, 231-245.

2015

  • Schwyzer PA. (2015) ‘“No Joyful Voices”: Thomas Browne and Archaeology’, Palgrave Handbook of Early Modern Literature, Science, and Culture, Palgrave.

2014

  • Schwyzer PA. (2014) "The Lady Speaks in Welsh": Henry IV, Part 1 as Multilingual Drama, Interlinguicity, Internationality, and Shakespeare, McGill-Queens University Press, 46-58.

2013

  • Schwyzer PA. (2013) A Scum of Britons? Richard III and the Celtic Reconquest, Celtic Shakespeare: The Bard and the Borderers, Ashgate.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2013) Shakespeare's Arts of Reenactment: Henry at Blackfriars, Richard at Rougemont, Arts of Remembrance in Early Modern England, Ashgate.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2013) Shakespeare and the Remains of Richard III, Oxford University Press.

2012

  • Schwyzer PA. (2012) "Paranoid History: John Bale's King Johan", The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama, OUP Oxford.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2012) Trophies, Traces, Relics and Props: The Untimely Objects of Richard III, Shakespeare Quarterly, volume 63, no. 3, pages 297-327.

2011

  • Schwyzer PA. (2011) Archipelagic History before Holinshed, The Oxford Handbook of Holinshed's Chronicles, OUP.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2011) Humphrey Llwyd, The Breviary of Britain, with selections from The History of Cambria, pages 1-209. [PDF]

2010

  • Maley W, Schwyzer PA. (2010) Shakespeare and Wales: From the Marches to the Assembly, Ashgate.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2010) Thirteen Ways of Looking Like a Welshman: Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Shakespeare and Wales: From the Marches to the Assembly, Ashgate, 21-42.

2009

  • Schwyzer PA. (2009) John Leland and his Heirs: The Topography of England, The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature, OUP, 238-253.

2007

  • Schwyzer PA. (2007) Archaeologies of English Renaissance Literature, Oxford University Press.

2006

  • Schwyzer, P.. (2006) ‘Exhumation and Ethnic Conflict: From St. Erkenwald to Spenser’, Representations.

2005

  • Schwyzer, P.. (2005) ‘Mummy is Become Merchandise: Literature and the Anglo-Egyptian Mummy Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, Re-Orienting the Renaissance, Palgrave, 66-87.

2004

  • Schwyzer P. (2004) ‘The Beauties of the Land: Bale’s Books, Aske’s Abbeys, and the Aesthetics of Nationhood’, Renaissance Quarterly, volume 57, pages 99-125.
  • Schwyzer P, Mealor S. (2004) Archipelagic identities, Ashgate Pub Ltd.
  • Schwyzer PA. (2004) Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales, Cambridge University Press.

2002

2001

  • Schwyzer PA. (2001) A Map of Greater Cambria, Literature, Mapping, and the Politics of Space in Early Modern Britain, Cambridge University Press, 35-44.

1999

  • Schwyzer P. (1999) ‘The Scouring of the White Horse: Archaeology, Identity, and "Heritage", Representations, volume 65, article no. 1999.

1997

  • Schwyzer P. (1997) ‘Purity and Danger on the West Bank of the Severn: The Cultural Geography of A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634’, Representations, volume 60, article no. 1997.

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External impact and engagement

The Speaking with the Dead Project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, culiminated in a series of public exhibitions and lectures at participating cathedrals, beginning in August 2014. Further public engagement activities are under development with Exeter Cathedral, supported by the ERC Past in its Place Project. These activities are co-ordinated by myself and Dr Naomi Howell. 

The Poly-Olbion Project also features a public engagement side, co-ordinated with our partners Flash of Splendour Arts.



Contribution to discipline

I am a current member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and a former member of the Executive Committee of the International Spenser Society. I have recently served as external examiner for the University of Sussex BA in English, and the University of Bristol MA English Studies.

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Teaching

My main teaching interests are in early modern literature and literary theory. I regularly teach on modules including Approaches to Criticism, Desire and Power, Academic English, and the MA module Renaissance Space. I also contribute lectures to a number of modules, including Beginnings; Rethinking Shakespeare; Renaissance and Revolution; Humanities after the Human; Theatrical Cultures; and Life and Death in Early Modern Literature.

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More information

I am a member of the AHRC Peer Review College, and am a former member of the Executive Committee for the International Spenser Society. In 2010, I organised the Shakespeare and Wales Symposium in Cardiff, and with my colleagues Dr Corinna Wagner and Dr Joanne Parker, I organised the conference 'Recasting the past: Early Modern to Postmodern Medievalisms' in 2011.

Future events associated with my current grants include a symposium on Death and Commemoration in November 2013, organized with Dr. Naomi Howell, and a conference on Place and Memory in 2015, co-sponsored by ECLIPSE. I am co-chair, with Prof. Karen Edwards, of the organizing committee for the International Milton Symposium, to take place at Exeter in July 2015.

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