Professor Timothy Michael

I am a critic of eighteenth-century and Romantic literature, with special interests in the history of philosophy, political theory, scholarly editing, and the history of criticism.  My writing has appeared in English Literary History, The Review of English Studies, Critical Inquiry, Studies in Romanticism, and elsewhere.   

I am currently working on two research projects: a long-lost, recently-recovered Augustan translation of an ancient epic and, with Paddy Bullard (University of Reading), a scholarly edition of Pope’s late prose for the Oxford Edition of the Writings of Alexander Pope.

I am the author of British Romanticism and the Critique of Political Reason (JHUP, 2016).  The book examines how figures such as Burke, Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley responded to a set of questions that very much remain with us: What role should reason play in the creation of a free and just society? Can we claim certain knowledge in a field as complex as politics? How can the cause of political rationalism be advanced when it is seen, by some, as having blood on its hands?  The argument of the book is that much of the literature at the heart of British Romanticism is a trial, or a critique, of reason in its political capacities and a test of the kinds of knowledge available to it.

In my research and teaching, I remain committed to the idea that the literature of the past can help us make sense of the present, and this idea is reflected in some of my writing: on, for example, current free-speech debates, the politics of the Middle East, and what sort of principles might govern a rationally ordered society.

Background:

PhD in English, Harvard University (2009)

MA in English, Harvard University (2005)

BA in English and Philosophy, New York University (2002)

From 2009 to 2012, I was Assistant Professor of the Humanities in the Society of Fellows at the University of Chicago.  I have taught at Oxford since 2013.