Darryl J. Gless
Professor of English & Comp Literature (3225);Roy C. Moose Distinguished Professor of Renaissance Studies
513 Greenlaw
Campus Box 3520
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3520
919-962-4046 (work)
919-942-2553 (home)
glessd@email.unc.edu
B.A. University of Nebraska, Lincoln, 1968
M.Phil. Oxford University, 1971
Ph.D. Princeton University, 1975
Research And Teaching Interests
Darryl Gless, after re-focusing his scholarly interests for a time on early modern cross-cultural contacts as well as the educational challenges and opportunities occasioned by increasing racial, ethnic, and other kinds of diversity in university classrooms, now has under way a set of articles that focus once again on religious figures in Shakespeare, methods of biblical interpretation employed by religious thinkers in England, and echoes of those methods in Shakespeare, Spenser, and (perhaps) other Elizabethan authors.
He has also returned to earlier areas of interest, represented by a variety of articles and a pair of books. The first is a study of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in its theological, philosophical, and political meanings and contexts (Princeton University Press, 1979), and the second a study of the theological implications of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Interpretation and Theology in Spenser (Cambridge University Press, 1994). The latter book describes the variety of complex and often apparently or actually contradictory ideas contained within sixteenth-century Protestant orthodoxy, explores that diversity’s implications for reading literature from doctrinal points of view, provides a detailed analysis of The Faerie Queene, Book I and suggests how the implications of Book I might enrich readings of the subsequent books.
Publications (Selected)
Books:
Interpretation and Theology in Spenser. Cambridge University Press, 1994. Paperback reissue, October 2005.
“Measure for Measure,” the Law, and the Convent. Princeton University Press, 1979. Explicator Award, second place.
Books edited:
Ed., with Barbara Herrnstein Smith. The Politics of Liberal Arts Education. Duke University Press, 1991.Gless, p. 5
Articles:
“Ekphrasis and Religious Ideology in Spenser’s Faerie Queene,” to be completed in September 2010 and published in The Art of Vision: Ekphrasis in Medieval Literature and Culture, Ohio State University Press.
“Shakespeare, Biblical Interpretation, and the Elusiveness of Meaning,” forthcoming in Literary Studies and the Question of Reading: Essays in Honor of Clayton Koelb, to be published by Camden House in 2012.
“Conversions in Shakespeare: Shylock and Others,” in Judaism and Crisis, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, expected 2010.
“Acts of Construction: the Sacraments and Spenser,” in Reformation 6 (2002): 109-14.
“Abraham Fraunce.” In Tudor England: An Encyclopedia. Eds. Arthur F. Kinney and David W. Swain. New York and London: Garland, 2001. Pp. 273-74.
“Edmund Spenser.” In Tudor England: An Encyclopedia. Eds. Arthur F. Kinney and David W. Swain. New York and London: Garland, 2001. Pp. 665-68.
“Julius Caesar, Allan Bloom, and the Importance of Pedagogical Pluralism.” Shakespeare: Right and Left. Ed. Ivo Kamps. London: Routledge, 1991. Pp. 185-203.
Ed., with Barbara Herrnstein Smith, The Politics of Liberal Arts Education, special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly 89:1 (Winter 1990).
Articles in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton, University of Toronto Press, 1990:
“The Armor of God” (1984)
“Law, Natural and Divine” (1987)
“Nature and Grace” (1985)
“Abessa and Corceca” (1983)
“Kirkrapine” (1983)
“Chapman’s Ironic Ovid,” English Literary Renaissance, 9 (1979): 21-41
Courses Offered (As Schedule Allows)
For current course listings, consult the Directory of Classes.
Courses Frequently Taught, graduate and undergraduate levels:
- · Classical and Renaissance Epic, Homer to Milton
- · Medieval Literature in Translation
- · Rensaissance NonDramatic Literature
- · Renaissance Drama
- · Shakespeare
- · Survey of Drama, Sophocles to August Wilson
- · Survey of English Literature, Beowulf to Pope
- · Business Writing.
Special Programs (a selection):
With Stephen Booth, Gary Taylor, Carol Neely, and George Wright, a weekend colloquium on Shakespeare.
The New Jersey Shakespeare Festival, Madison, NJ, August 10-12, 1990.
With Annabel Patterson (Duke) and Thomas P. Roche, Jr. (Princeton), an Institute on Edmund Spenser’s
Faerie Queene, a six-week, NEH-funded program for college and university professors, Princeton University,
July 10-August 18, 1989.