Fiona Stafford

Last updated

Fiona Stafford
Born
Lincoln, England
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Professor of English Language and Literature
Academic background
Education University of Leicester
University of Oxford

Fiona Stafford FBA is Professor of English Language and Literature and a Fellow of Somerville College at the University of Oxford. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Stafford was born in Lincoln but moved around during her childhood following her father's postings in the Royal Air Force. She studied for a BA in English language and literature at the University of Leicester, writing a dissertation on RAF slang. She then studied at the University of Oxford gaining an M.Phil. in English Language and Literature and a D.Phil. [3] Her thesis was on The sublime savage : a study of James Macpherson and the poems of Ossian in relation to the cultural context of Scotland in the 1750s and 1760s. [4]

Career

After a short spell teaching in the United States Stafford returned to Oxford and was appointed a tutorial fellow of Somerville College. [3] She is also Professor of English Language and Literature in the Faculty of English of the University of Oxford. [1]

Her areas of research include "Ossian, Austen, Burns, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, the Shelleys, Byron, Heaney, Carson, literature of the Romantic period, the literature of place, nature writing (old and new), Scottish poetry after 1700, dialogues between English, Irish and Scottish literature, literature and the visual arts, and contemporary poetry". [5]

In 2018 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. [6]

In 2019 the University of Leicester conferred on her an honorary doctorate of letters. [3]

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ossian</span> Purported author of a cycle of epic poems

Ossian is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, originally as Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763), and later combined under the title The Poems of Ossian. Macpherson claimed to have collected word-of-mouth material in Scottish Gaelic, said to be from ancient sources, and that the work was his translation of that material. Ossian is based on Oisín, son of Fionn mac Cumhaill, a legendary bard in Irish mythology. Contemporary critics were divided in their view of the work's authenticity, but the current consensus is that Macpherson largely composed the poems himself, drawing in part on traditional Gaelic poetry he had collected.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</span> English poet, literary critic and philosopher (1772–1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He also shared volumes and collaborated with Charles Lamb, Robert Southey, and Charles Lloyd.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Macpherson</span> Scottish writer, poet, literary collector and politician

James Macpherson was a Scottish writer, poet, literary collector, and politician. He is known for the Ossian cycle of epic poems, which he claimed to have discovered and translated from Gaelic.

British literature is literature from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands. This article covers British literature in the English language. Anglo-Saxon literature is included, and there is some discussion of Latin and Anglo-Norman literature, where literature in these languages relate to the early development of the English language and literature. There is also some brief discussion of major figures who wrote in Scots, but the main discussion is in the various Scottish literature articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romantic poetry</span> Artistic, literary, musical and intellectual genre and movement

Romantic poetry is the poetry of the Romantic era, an artistic, literary, musical and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It involved a reaction against prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the 18th century, and lasted approximately from 1800 to 1850. Romantic poets rebelled against the style of poetry from the eighteenth century which was based around epics, odes, satires, elegies, epistles and songs.

<i>Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803</i>

Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland, A. D. 1803 (1874) is a travel memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth about a six-week, 663-mile journey through the Scottish Highlands from August–September 1803 with her brother William Wordsworth and mutual friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Some have called it "undoubtedly her masterpiece" and one of the best Scottish travel literature accounts during a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries which saw hundreds of such examples. It is often compared as the Romantic counterpart to the better-known Enlightenment-era A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775) by Samuel Johnson written about 27 years earlier. Dorothy wrote Recollections for family and friends and never saw it published in her lifetime.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">English literature</span> Literary works written in the English language

English literature is literature written in the English language from the English-speaking world. The English language has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a set of Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon invaders in the fifth century, are called Old English. Beowulf is the most famous work in Old English, and has achieved national epic status in England, despite being set in Scandinavia. However, following the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the written form of the Anglo-Saxon language became less common. Under the influence of the new aristocracy, French became the standard language of courts, parliament, and polite society. The English spoken after the Normans came is known as Middle English. This form of English lasted until the 1470s, when the Chancery Standard, a London-based form of English, became widespread. Geoffrey Chaucer (1343–1400), author of The Canterbury Tales, was a significant figure in the development of the legitimacy of vernacular Middle English at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were still French and Latin. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439 also helped to standardise the language, as did the King James Bible (1611), and the Great Vowel Shift.

Edna Longley is an Irish literary critic and cultural commentator specialising in modern Irish and British poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Newlyn</span>

Lucy Newlyn is a poet and academic. She is Emeritus Fellow in English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, having retired as professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford in 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Romantic literature in English</span> Era in English-language literature

Romanticism was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century. Scholars regard the publishing of William Wordsworth's and Samuel Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads in 1798 as probably the beginning of the movement in England, and the crowning of Queen Victoria in 1837 as its end. Romanticism arrived in other parts of the English-speaking world later; in the United States, it arrived around 1820.

Mary Madge Lascelles was a British literary scholar, specialising in Jane Austen, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, and Walter Scott. She was vice-principal of Somerville College, Oxford, from 1947 to 1960, and a university lecturer then reader in English literature 1960 from to 1967 at the University of Oxford.

Claire Lamont was a British academic who was Emeritus Professor of English literature at Newcastle University and a specialist in the oeuvres of Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott. She was a winner of the British Academy's Rose Mary Crawshay Prize in 1983.

Clair Wills,, is a British academic specialising in 20th-century British and Irish cultural history and literature. Since 2019, she has been King Edward VII Professor of English Literature at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge. After studying at the Somerville College, Oxford, she taught at the University of Essex and Queen Mary University of London. She was then Leonard L. Milberg ’53 Chair of Irish Letters at Princeton University from 2015 to 2019, before moving to Cambridge.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ruth Finnegan</span> British author, professor, linguistic anthropologist

Ruth Hilary Finnegan is a Northern Irish linguistic anthropologist and Emeritus Professor of the Open University.

References

  1. 1 2 "Fiona Stafford". Somerville College. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  2. "Professor Fiona Stafford". Faculty of English Language and Literature. University of Oxford. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 "Professor Fiona Stafford". Graduation Ceremonies: Summer 2018: Honorands. University of Leicester. Retrieved 19 July 2019.Includes video of the oration and her response
  4. "Catalogue record for "The sublime savage ..."". COPAC. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  5. "Professor Fiona Stafford". Find an Expert. University of Oxford. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  6. "Professor Fiona Stafford FBA". British Academy . Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  7. Carey, John. "Review: The Brief Life of Flowers by Fiona Stafford — blossoming with significance". Sunday Times. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  8. Griffiths, Mark (20 August 2016). "Book of the week: The Long, Long Life of Trees". Country Life. Retrieved 19 July 2019.