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School of English

Professor Ceri Sullivan, D. Phil. Oxon, FEA, FHEA

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Name:

Ceri Sullivan

Position:

Professor

Email:

Location:

302, third floor, Main Arts

Phone:

+44 (0)1248 383612

Enjoys teaching

Early modern rhetoric and religious literature. Any period of mercantile literature or work connected with creativity in industry.

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Research profile

'Language most shows a man: speak that I may see thee'. Jonson's confidence in his ability to read through the rhetoric is a constant challenge to me in research, and my three monographs have browsed, sheeplike, over this terrain.

The first dealt with whether one may persuade oneself in devotion, focusing on Catholic texts (Dismembered Rhetoric: English Recusant Writing 1580-1603). The second mused over how a merchant represents himself and reads others' representations in the real and dramatic markets (The Rhetoric of Credit: Merchants in Early Modern Writing).  A third asks whether, if the conscience is structured as a language, the consequence of the divine I AM is YOU AREN'T (The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert and Vaughan).

I am now completing a monograph, Sublime Bureaucracy: Literature and the Public Services. I will be drawing on my previous experience as a chartered accountant with KPMG in London and as a VSO in Zambia for this.  I have three aims:
  • to reassess Max Weber’s understanding of the individual in the ideal bureaucracy
  • to recognise the past and current relationship between creativity and bureaucracy
  • to map how representations of bureaucracy are employed.

There are three spin-off collaborative projects from this:

  • a collection of essays on environments which authors find creative (for the English Association)
  • a knowledge transfer catalyst, transforming the university screen saver from corporate wallpaper into a communication channel (with a London-based new media company, funded by the AHRC)
  • a report considering how far skills in an English degree, such as analogical thinking, are of use in the City (for the English Subject Centre).

 I would be deeply interested to hear from anyone working in this area.

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Major publications

  • Essays and Studies: the Creative Environment (Cambridge:  English Association/Boydell and Brewer, 2009), co-ed. with Graeme Harper
  • The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert and Vaughan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)
  • 'The carpe diem topos and the “geriatric gaze” in early modern verse', Early Modern Literary Studies, 14.2 (Sept 2008)
  • ‘Disposable elements?  Indications of genre in early modern titles’, Modern Language Review 102.3 (2007), pp. 641-56.
  • 'Thomas Middleton's View of Public Utility', Review of English Studies (2007) 58(234), pp. 162-174.
  • ‘The art of listening in the seventeenth century’, Modern Philology 104.1 (2006), pp. 34-71.
  • ‘London’s early modern creative industrialists’, Studies in Philology 103.3 (2006), pp. 313-28.
  • The Rhetoric of Credit. Merchants in Early Modern Writing (Madison/London: Associated U.P., 2002).
  • Writing and Fantasy (London: Longman, 1999), co-ed, contrib, intro with Barbara White.
  • ‘Physiology of penance in weeping texts of 1590s’, Cahiers Elisabethains 57 (2000), pp. 31-48.
  • ‘Britain’s renaissance of letters’, in Courts, Patrons, Poets, ed. David Mateer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 227-97.
  • ‘The “well wrought urn” as competitive trope’, Essays in Criticism 48 (1998), pp. 129-43.
  • ‘Wreath poems as florilegia’, George Herbert Journal 19 (1996), pp. 95-102.
  • Dismembered Rhetoric. English Recusant Writing, 1580-1603 (Madison/London: Associated University Press, 1995).

Current Support for Others' Research

  • JISC Historic Books, Advisory Board (2012-)
  • CCUE Executive (2011-)
  • English Association, Higher Education Committee (2010-)
  • Member, AHRC Peer Review College (2005-)

Peer recognition

  • Fellow of the Higher Education Academy 2011-
  • AHRC Knowledge Transfer Catalyst with Oxigen II Ltd, 2008-10
  • International Society for History of Rhetoric, U.K. representative 2004-08
  • HEFCW Collaboration and Reconfiguration grant, £520,000 (co-applicant with Professor Claire Jowitt), to set up the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2006
  • Folger Library short-term fellowship 2006
  • Fellow, English Association (2005-)
  • AHRB study leave 1999/00, 2003/04
  • Huntington Library/British Academy exchange award 2004                        
  • Trinity College, Cambridge visiting scholar 2005
  • British Academy small research grants 2003, 2005, 2007
  • English Subject Centre project grants 2004, 2007
  • Advisory board, Renaissance Studies 2003-07
  • Book reviews editor, Renaissance Studies 1997-2003

Reviews of Sullivan's Work

The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan: ‘intelligent and entertaining’, ‘witty’, ‘keen sense for when the pursuit of piety veers into sardonic comedy’ (Review of English Studies 60.247); ‘extremely interesting, if stomach-churning’, ‘excellent close readings’, ‘subtle, interesting… valuable and welcome’ (MLR 104.3); ‘rich and stimulating, dense but readable’, ‘innovative, sustained, and illuminating rhetorical analyses [of] a vital subject in our intellectual history’ (Rhetorica 28); ‘brilliant insights through unusual juxtaposition and deft assimilation’ (Seventeenth Century Journal 25.1); ‘expands our knowledge of theological and tropological connections in early modern devotional texts’, ‘surprising and valuable (Year’s Work in English Studies 89); ‘insightful... sharp… probing’ (George Herbert Journal 32.1).

Authors at Work: the Creative Environment: ‘deliciously voyeuristic’ (Guardian 15/8/09); ‘rewards curiosity’ (TLS 26/6/09).

The Rhetoric of Credit: Merchants in Early Modern Writing: ‘incisive and learned’, ‘fascinating’, ‘an important book’ (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 4.2); ‘redresses deficienc[ies]’, ‘historically specific’, ‘disdains previous interpretations’, ‘drives home her point’ (The Historical Journal 49.4); ‘original and complex’, unusually productive combination of professional skills’’, ‘testing but welcome factual ballast to usual critical tendencies’ (Notes and Queries 3/2004); ‘succinct, informed… fresh’, ‘learned… and important’ (Renaissance Forum 7); ‘double expertise’, ‘fascinating’, ‘provocative and very important’ (Business History 46.1); ‘welcome corrective’, densely detailed’ (Review of English Studies 55); ‘palpable irritation [which]… is engaging, not off-putting, inspiring, not reactionary’ (Sixteenth-century Journal 34.3).

Writing and Fantasy: ‘theoretically sophisticated’, ‘sureness of touch’, ‘impresses’ (Gothic Studies); ‘outstanding in its range and breadth’; ‘far-reaching and important… fresh and interesting’, ‘none of the usual archetype-hunting and no facile claims’ (Journal of the Fantastic).

Dismembered Rhetoric: English Recusant Writing, 1580-1603: ‘timely.. controversial… strong’, ‘intriguing and compelling’, ‘subtle, learned, and interesting’ (MLR 93.1); ‘fascinating’ (Shakespeare Quarterly); ‘wonderful’, ‘should be received warmly and enthusiastically’, ‘densely argued’ , ‘rock solid and satisfying’ (Sixteenth-century Journal 27.2).