Kenneth Gross

Professor of English

PhD  Yale University
Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry and drama, poetry and poetics, theater, literature and the visual arts
 
Research/Writing interests

I am interested in the inner workings of literary texts, both in themselves and as they form part of a dynamic, ongoing history.  I am interested in the nature of speech, gesture, and expression in drama and theater, ranging from the complexities of character in  Shakespearean tragedy to the deceptive simplicities of puppet theater.  I am interested in the myriad points of crossing between the visual and the verbal arts, in how what we say and what we see relate to each other.  If my central scholarly home is in Renaissance literature, especially the work of Shakespeare and Spenser, I have found myself necessarily taking up texts from classical literature, the middle ages, romanticism, and modernity, from Dante to Rilke, from Ovid to Phillip Roth.  In all this, I am interested in what Samuel Johnson calls "the force of poetry," "that force which calls new powers into being, which embodies sentiment, and animates matter."
   
Selected publications

• Shylock Is Shakespeare, University of Chicago 2006  
  
• Shakespeare's Noise, University of Chicago 2001  
  
• The Dream of the Moving Statue, Cornell 1992, paperback edition Pennsylvania State University 2006
• Spenserian Poetics: Idolatry, Iconoclasm, and Magic, Cornell 1985
• "John Donne's Lyric Skepticism: In Strange Way," in Modern Philology 101.3 (2004), 371-99
• "Ordinary Twinship," in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 22.4  (2002), 20-39
• "Love among the Puppets," in Raritan: A Quarterly Review 17.1 (1997), 67-82
• "Anthony Hecht and the Imagination of Rage," in The Burdens of Formality: Essays on the Poetry of Anthony Hecht, ed. Sydney Lea, University of Georgia 1989, 159-85
• "Satan and the Romantic Satan: A Notebook," in Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions, ed. Mary Nyquist and Margaret W. Ferguson, Methuen 1987, 318-41
• "Infernal Metamorphoses:  An Interpretation of Dante's 'Counterpass,'" MLN (Italian Issue) 100.1 (1985), 42-69

Teaching

My courses take up a variety of poetic and dramatic texts, from the biblical narratives and Renaissance drama to modern poetry. If there is an aim they all share, it is in the desire to help students to understand the complex, often ambiguous life of literary texts, to hone their powers of analysis and response, their ability to listen for what's said and not said in a work of literature, as well as their capacity for surprise.
 
Recent undergraduate courses

• Shakespeare (spring 2007)
• Renaissance Literature (spring 2007)
  
• Milton (spring 2006)
  
• Lyric Poetry (fall 2006)
  
• The Literature of the Bible (fall 2003)

• Shakespearean Tragedy (spring 2006)
  
• Literature and the Visual Arts
  
• Spenser and Allegory

• Visiting Fellow, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University
  
• National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship
  
• Senior Research Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
  
• Mellon Faculty Research Fellowship, Folger Shakespeare Library
  
• American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, University of Rochester