 | English Department Fields: Restoration and 18th Century British Literature; Poetry; Translation |
| • CV (PDF) » | Email: mschoenb@holycross.edu Office Phone: 508-793-3521 Office: Fenwick 222 PO Box: 47A Office Hours: T 1–2; Th 11:45 AM-1 PM, and by appt. |
Biography
My teaching and research are guided by two central interests: the culture of translation, imitation, and rewriting that flourished in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; and the shifting significances of literary forms over time. I have recently completed my first book, titled Cultivating Peace: The Virgilian Georgic in English, 1650–1750, published by Bucknell University Press (the history of which was recently recounted here). In the book, I propose that several poets working in the decades following the English Civil Wars drew from the Roman poet Virgil a language for articulating the difficulties of forging and sustaining peace. I have also published essays and reviews in Restoration, Translation and Literature, Philological Quarterly, Gale Researcher, Eighteenth Century Studies, Romanticism, and Studies in Romanticism. Currently, I am working on a book project on long poems by Alexander Pope, John Armstrong, Christopher Smart, and William Cowper.
I frequently teach Poetry and Poetics, Touchstones I: Early British Literature, Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Milton, and Georgic and Pastoral (Environmental Studies), and am always interested in advising senior theses and capstones, as well as in supporting student research associateships and summer research projects.