Dr Adam Smyth awarded the annual English Literary Renaissance essay prize
Dr Adam Smyth has been awarded the annual English Literary Renaissance essay prize for the best article to appear in this journal for 2012.
Dr Adam Smyth has been awarded the annual English Literary Renaissance essay prize for the best article to appear in this journal for 2012.
Dr Smyth's article, '"Shreds of holinesse": George Herbert, Little Gidding, and Cutting Up Texts in Early Modern England', explores the ways in which Renaissance readers and writers often cut up manuscripts and printed texts as part of their reading, with little sense of transgression or taboo. There are some spectacular examples of this in the cut-and-paste Bibles made at Little Gidding in the 1630s; and this culture of reading-with-knives -- of the pious dismantling and remaking of texts -- lies behind many of George Herbert's devotional poems.
Dr Smyth teaches on the BA English and BA Arts and Humanities courses, and the MA Renaissance Studies.