Dr. John Curran

Dr. John CurranMarquette University

Marquette Hall, 211

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3462john.curran@mu.edu

Professor

English

Editor of Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature. Renaissance Literature; Shakespeare.

My research and teaching interests cover a wide range of authors, genres, and ideas from sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. My earlier research concerned the Renaissance English sense of the past and the theological questions that separated Protestants and Catholics. My book Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England 1530-1660 (University of Delaware Press, 2002) explores the connection between these two areas, by tracing the link between an attraction to medieval historiography and a growing Protestant nationalism. In this project I was able to combine a general interest in the ways the Renaissance holds onto and departs from its medieval heritage with a focus on literary issues such as the development of historical drama and epic, and the thinking of such writers as Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. My second book, Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not To Be (Ashgate, 2006), deals with how religious controversies of the time, especially regarding Calvinistic Protestantism, tell on Shakespeare’s enormously complicated play. More recently, I have been investigating how theology and history, but also rhetoric, logic, humors psychology, and astrology, informed concepts of personhood and the dramatic portrayal of specific persons. This effort has culminated in my third book, Character and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy (University of Delaware Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).

Though I have been concentrating on drama for some time, I am currently beginning a return to epic literature. Marquette's program has allowed this variety to be reflected in my teaching. While always keeping my attention on Shakespeare, I have been able to pursue my fascination with non-Shakespearean Renaissance drama, as well as delve into Milton, Spenser, and other sixteenth-century and medieval authors. I have in addition enjoyed the opportunities our Introduction to Literature and our Honors courses offer to examine the literatures of other periods and countries.

Courses Taught

• Renaissance Literature
• Shakespeare

Research Interests

• Renaissance Literature

Publications

• “Spenser’s Faerie Virtues and the Tautology of Occasion.” Parergon 41.1 (2024): 43-65.
• “The Pleasing Analysis of The Faerie Queene.” Studies in Philology 120 (2023): 33-69.
• “Spenser and Logic: Gigantomachia and Contentlessness in The Faerie Queene." Spenser Studies 36 (2022): 179-207.  
• Despaire and Briton Moniments: Moments of Protestant Clarity in The Faerie Queene.” Reformation 25.2 (2020): 175-91. 
• “Determin’d Things: The Historical Reconstruction of Character in Antony and Cleopatra,” for Antony and Cleopatra: A Critical Reader, ed. Domenico Lovascio (London: Bloomsbury/Arden, 2019), 133-54.
• “That Suggestion: Catholic Casuistry, Complexity, and Macbeth,” in Religions in Shakespeare’s Writings, ed. David Urban, for special issue of Religions. Religions 9 no. 10:315 (2018): 1-17; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9100315
• "Milton and the Logic of Annihilation.” Milton Quarterly 51 (2017): 1-22
• "Poetical History,” in Spenser in Context, ed. Andrew Escobedo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 185-93.
• "What Should Be In That Caesar: The Question of Julius Caesar’s Greatness,” in Julius Caesar: A Critical Reader, ed. Andrew James Hartley (London: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2016), 153-74.
• Character and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy (University of Delaware Press/Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
• "'Duke Byron Flows with Adust and Melancholy Choler': General and Special Character in Chapman's Byron Plays," Studies in Philology 108 (2011): 345-78.
• “Fletcher, Massinger, and Roman Imperial Character,” Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 317-54.
• "Jacob and Esau and the Iconoclasm of Merit,” Studies in English Literature 49.2 (2009): 285-309.
• Hamlet, Protestantism, and the Mourning of Contingency: Not to Be. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.
• Roman Invasions: The British History, Protestant Anti-Romanism, and the Historical Imagination in England 1530-1660. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002.
• “You are Yourself: Calvinist Dramaturgy and its Discontents in the Tragedy of Sir John Van Oldenbarnavelt.” Exemplaria 16 (2004): 235-65.
• “Geoffrey of Monmouth in Renaissance Drama: Imagining Non-History,” Modern Philology 97 (1999):1-20.

Additional Information

Office Hours

Spring 2025

• Mon 12:00-1:30
• Wed 2:30-4:30Wed 2:30-4:30

Teaching Schedule

Spring 2025

• 4331/101 MWF 10:00-10:50 Lalumiere Hall 272
  • Shakespeare
• 4351/101 MWF 11:00-11:50 Lalumiere Hall 130
  • Milton