Joseph Turner

Thesis title: The art of ease in English poetry

Supervisor: Professor Freya Johnston

Doctoral research: I am working on 'ease' in literature from the late seventeenth to the late eighteenth century, with a focus on poetry. My research is funded by an AHRC OOC-DTP studentship. Before starting the DPhil, I read for a BA in English at St Anne's College, and for an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Literature at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

Research interests: Restoration, eighteenth century, and Romantic period literature; poetry; style; comedy and satire; close reading; the history and language of literary criticism. Authors of particular interest include Dryden, Rochester, Prior, Pope, Sterne, Johnson, Churchill, Cowper, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Austen, and Peacock.

Teaching: I am presently a Stipendiary Lecturer at Keble College, where I teach Prelims 1b and FHS 5. I have also taught at Balliol.

Publications

'Churchill's Nervousness', Essays in Criticism, 72 (2022), pp. 463-77.

'Cowper's Pauses', The Review of English Studies, 75 (2024), pp. 472-87.

'XI. The Eighteenth Century (1700-1780): 1. General and Prose', The Year's Work in English Studies, 102 (2023), pp. 646-72.

'XI. The Eighteenth Century (1700-1780): 1. General and Prose', The Year's Work in English Studies, 103 (2024), pp. 628-53.

Conference papers

'Elegance and Truth in Hester Lynch Piozzi's British Synonymy', 54th Annual BSECS Conference, Pembroke College, Oxford, 9th January 2025.

'Johnson's Vision of Indolence', Romantic Research Seminar, Balliol College, Oxford, 29th October 2024.

'What is "easy writing"?', 53rd Annual BSECS Conference, St Hugh's College, Oxford, 4th January 2024.

'Pope's Contempt', The Pleasures of Hating, 1660-1830, Trinity College, Cambridge, 18th November 2023.

'Churchill among the Poets', Influence: 50 Years On, Magdalen College, Oxford, 25th September 2023.