English Department
Associate Professor of English
On Faculty since 2005
Office: Blanchard Hall 310
Phone: (630)752-5052
Email: brett.foster@wheaton.edu
Education
Ph.D., Yale University, 2005
Wallace Stegner Fellow, Stanford University, 1997-1999
M.A., Boston University, 1996
B.J., University of Missouri, 1995
A.B., University of Missouri, 1995
About Brett Foster
Dr. Foster's interests include Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature, Creative Writing, Shakespeare, Renaissance Drama, Religion and Literature, Early Modern Travel Literature, Italian Renaissance Literature, Anglo-Italian Texts, Classical Influence in the Renaissance, Translation & Imitation, Poetics, Modern and Contemporary Poetry, and Traditions of Lyric Poetry.
Courses Taught
- Classical and Early British Literature [Engl 215]
- Introduction to Creative Writing [Engw 213]
- Creative Nonfiction [Engw 330]
- Poetry Workshop by Renaissance Principles [Engw 444]
- Writing Lyric Poetry: Imitation and Invention [Engw 444]
- Shakespeare [Engl 334]
- English Renaissance [Engl 336]
- John Donne [Engl 348]
- Modern British Literature [Engl 364]
- Poetry Writing and Criticism [Engw 433]
Membership in Professional Societies
- Modern Language Association
- Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers
- Sixteenth Century Society and Conference
- Renaissance Society of America
- Association or Writers and Writing Programs
- Conference on Christianity and Literature
- Shakespeare Association of America
- Marlowe Society of America
Research
Current Projects
Scholarly monograph entitled “The Metropolis of Popery: English Encounters with Renaissance Rome”
Love Poems of the English Renaissance, an anthology of lyric poems with accompanying mini-essays
Translated volume of selected sonnets of medieval Sienese poet (and rival of Dante’s) Cecco Angiolieri
Edition of three “Rome books” by the Elizabethan traveler and apostate John Nichols
Articles in progress or recently completed on Marlowe and Onstage Books, The Quenes Majesties Passage and Renaissance London, Renaissance Uses of Moses, Information Networks and Renaissance Rome, the Mannerist Artist Agnolo Bronzino, George Herbert and Remembrance of New Life, The King James Bible and Shakespeare's Henry VIII, and Spenserian Influence on Contemporary Poets.
Publications
Shakespeare’s Life volume for a “Backgrounds to Shakespeare” reference series (Forthcoming)
The Garbage Eater. Evanston: Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011.
Poems have appeared in Anglican Theological Review, Ascent, Books & Culture, The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, Crab Orchard Review, Hudson Review, Image, Literary Imagination, Poetry East, Raritan, Seattle Review, Sewanee Theological Review, Southwest Review, and other journals, as well as in the Best New Poets series, American Religious Poems (New York: Library of America 2006), and other anthologies.
Shakespeare Through the Ages: The Sonnets (New York: Infobase, 2009) – edited volume for a reference series that summarizes Shakespeare’s works, contextualizes by century their critical reception, and reprints influential criticism [editor].
Shakespeare Through the Ages: Hamlet (New York: Infobase, 2008) [editor].
“Cecco Angiolieri and Comic-Realistic Sonnets,” article in Literary Imagination (fall 2010) [forthcoming].
“Crying Giant: On Rilke’s Poetry,” review-essay in Common Review (fall 2010) [forthcoming].
“‘Harry’s Peregrinations: An Italianate Defense of Henry VIII,” article in Henry VIII in History, ed. Thomas Betteridge and Thomas S. Freeman (Ashgate, 2011) [forthcoming].
“Hell is Discovered: The Roman Destination of Doctor Faustus,” Christopher Marlowe the Craftsman: Lives, Stage, and Page, ed. M. L. Stapleton and Sarah K. Scott (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010), 179-97.
“‘Each Letter In the Letter’: Textual Testimonies in Shakespeare,” Word and Rite: The Bible and Ceremony in Selected Shakespearean Works, ed. Beatrice Batson (Cambridge Scholars, 2010), 113-52.
“Bright Stamps: John Keats’ Letters to Fanny Brawne,” Books & Culture 16, no. 5 (2010): 36-40.
“London Letters” [epistolary essays exchanged with Alan Jacobs], for Books & Culture online (May 2010)
“Reading Marlowe Again,” Kenyon Review 31, no. 4 (fall 2009): 179-83.
“The Goodliest Place In This World: Early Tudor Reactions to Papal Rome,” in The Sacred and Profane in English Renaissance Literature, ed. Mary A. Papazian (Newark: University of Delaware Press 2008),27-56.
“The Continuing Reign of Queen Elizabeth,” The Common Review 7, no. 2 (2008): 32-41.
“Walking in Rome: Lyrical Disillusion and Revisitation,” Valley Voices: A Literary Review 8, no. 1 (2008): 1-5.
“Sympathy for the Devil: The Lives & Afterlives of Christopher Marlowe,” The Common Review 5, no. 4 (2007): 6-16.
“Gregory Martin’s ‘Holy Latinate Jerusalem’: Roman English, Romanist Values, and the Rheims New Testament (1582),” Prose Studies 28, no. 2 (2006): 130-49.
Reviews and review-essays have appeared in Books & Culture, Boston Review, The Christian Century, Christianity and Literature, The Common Review, The Georgia Review, Harvard Review, Journal of British Studies, Missouri Review, Modern Philology, Renaissance Quarterly, Shakespeare Bulletin, Sixteenth Century Journal, and other journals
Translations of poetry have appeared in Arion, Eleven Eleven, Green Mountains Review, Hampden-Sidney Poetry Review, Italian Poetry Review, Journal of Italian Translation, Metamorphoses, Partisan Review, Palimpsest, Poems Bewitched and Haunted (New York: Everyman, 2005), RHINO, Saint Ann’s Review, Yale Italian Poetry, and other journals
Lectures & Panels
In 2010-11 I am organizing or participating in sessions on teaching Renaissance lyric poetry, scholar-poets on Renaissance and contemporary poetry, the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, and the reception of Henry VIII.
I have recently given talks at the Marlowe Society Sixth International Conference (Canterbury), the Spenser International Congress (Toronto), the Chicago Renaissance Seminar, a “Shakespeare and Renaissance Ethics” symposium (Yale), the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Sixteenth-Century Society and Conference, North American Conference on British Studies, and conferences of the Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers, Modern Language Association, Shakespeare Association of America, and Renaissance Society of America. I have also read poems at Common Good Books (St. Paul), Prairie Lights Books (Iowa City), Harold Washington Library (Chicago), and other venues.