Michael Leslie

B.A. Hons. (University of Leicester), Ph.D. (University of Edinburgh)

Professor of English and Dean of British Studies At Oxford

Rhodes College, 2000 North Parkway, Memphis TN 38112
tel.: (901) 843 3715; fax (901) 843 3717; e-mail leslie@rhodes.edu

Research Interests

I work on a range of subjects, most of which intersect and are to do with the exploration of the culture of Britain in the 16th and 17th centuries. My principal publications are here grouped into broad subjects, for more clarity than would be provided by a chronological listing (which can be found under Principal Publications). Most of my research interests have their origin in the study of literature.

Selected Invited Lectures

Conference of Dutch University English Departments, Leiden, 1983.
Kodak Public Lectures, Hatfield, England, 1985, 1986.
Architectural Association School of Architecture, London, annual series, 1986-1993.
Cambridge University, 1987, 1988.
32nd Conference d'Etudes Humanistes: `Texte et Image', Centre d'Etudes Superieures de la Renaissance, Tours, 1989.
International Word & Image Conference, Zurich, 1990.
British Academy, Annual Chatterton Lecture on Poetry, 1990.
Schweizerisches Institut fur Kunstwissenschaft, Zurich, 1991.
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC (Harvard University), March 1991.
The Octagon, Washington D.C. (American Architectural Association), April 1992.
Society for Theatre Research, London, February 1993.
Studies in Landscape Architecture, Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University) Washington D.C., May 1993.
Graduate School of Fine Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, November 1996.
Davidson College, January 2001
Bates College, March 2002

Publications

English Renaissance Literature

Spenser's "Fierce Warres and Faithfull Loves": Martial and Chivalric Symbolism in "The Faerie Queene" (1982)

and articles and contributions to books.

Literature and the Visual Arts

Founding joint editor of Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry (1985)

Edited and Selected Collection in microform (with John Dixon Hunt): Shakespeare and the Visual Arts, Unit 17 of Shakespeariana edited by Philip Brockbank et al (University Microfilms International: Japan, 1989, rest of world, 1990). [A collection of c.250 primary and secondary texts selected and introduced, with an overall introduction to the subject].

"The Dialogue between Bodies and Souls: Painting and Poetry in the English Renaissance", Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 1 (1985), pp. 16-30.

"Edmund Spenser: Art and The Faerie Queene", Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1991), 73-107.

Garden and Landscape History

Founding Review Editor of the Journal of Garden History, 1980

edited (with Timothy Raylor), Culture and Cultivation in Early Modern England: Writing and the Land (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992). Pp. xiv + 241. Paperback edition, 1994.

"'Gardens of Eloquence': Rhetoric, Landscape, and Literature in the English Renaissance" in Towards a Definition of Topos: Approaches to Analogical Reasoning, edited by Lynette Hunter (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 17-44.

"Spenser, Sidney, and the Renaissance Garden", English Literary Renaissance 22 (1992), 3-36.

"An English Landscape Garden before the 'English Landscape Garden'?" Journal of Garden History 13 (1993), 3-15.

"Humanist Gardens", The Macmillan Dictionary of Art (London: Macmillan, 1996).

"'Bringing Ingenuity into Fashion': The 'Elysium Britannicum' and the Reformation of Husbandry" in John Evelyn's "Elysium Britannicum" and European Gardening, eds. Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn and Therese O'Malley (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998), pp. 131-152.

"Something Nasty in the Wilderness: Entertaining Queen Elizabeth on her Progresses" inMedieval and Renaissance Drama in England, vol. 10, edited by John Pitcher (Madison: Farleigh Dickinson U.P., 1998), pp. 47-72.

"History and Historiography in the English Landscape Garden" in Perspectives on Garden History edited by Michel Conan (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1999), pp. 91-106.

"Gardens" in Tudor England: An Encyclopedia edited by Arthur F. Kinney and David W. Swain (New York: Garland, 2001), pp. 282-284.

Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century

edited, with other members of the Hartlib Papers Project team, The Hartlib Papers: A Complete Text and Image Database of the Papers of Samuel Hartlib (c.1600-1662) (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI, 1995; second, enlarged and revised edition, Sheffield, 2002). 2 CD Roms, containing the texts of 20,000 pages of manuscript and 5,000 pages of printed material, plus 22,000 images, and including TOPIC text retrieval and analysis software.

edited (with Mark Greengrass and Timothy Raylor), Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; reissued, 2002). Pp. xix + 372.

and Information Technology in Humanities Scholarship.

Michael Leslie's homepage

Homepage

Research Interests

Principal Publications