Prof Jonathan Hope
professor
7.30 LIVINGSTONE TOWER
Tel : +44 (0)141 548 3636 (Ext. 3636)
- Translation Arrays (Principal investigator)
- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE (Principal investigator)
- Group for Renaissance Research Reading (Academic)
- Visualizing English Print from c. 1470 to 1800 (Principal investigator)
- The Digital Renaissance: mapping the language of drama 1550-1700 (Principal investigator)
My main area of research is the computer-based linguistic analysis of texts. This work is collaborative with Michael Witmore of the Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington DC), and Robin Valenza and Mike Gleicher of Wisconsin-Madison University.
Small-scale start-up funding came from The Royal Society of Edinburgh, and we now hold a major grant from The Mellon Foundation. You can read about our latest findings here.
Press coverage
The project has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fast Company.
Academic articles
Jonathan Hope and and Michael Witmore, 2010, ‘The hundredth psalm to the tune of “Green Sleeves”: Digital Approaches to the Language of Genre’, Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 3 (Fall 2010), pp. 357-90
Michael Witmore and Jonathan Hope, 2007, 'Shakespeare by the numbers: on the linguistic texture of the Late Plays' in Early Modern Tragicomedy, Subha Mukherji and Raphael Lyne (eds), (D.S. Brewer), pp. 133-53
Jonathan Hope and Michael Witmore, 2004, 'The very large texual object: a prosthetic reading of Shakespeare', Early Modern Literary Studies 9.3 Special Issue 12: 6.1-36
NEH Early Modern Digital Agendas
In July 2013 I will direct a three-week Summer Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Further details and applications here.
My research can best be described as Literary Linguistics (the application of linguistic techniques and theories to literary texts), with a strong emphasis on the analysis of Early Modern English, and Shakespeare’s language in particular.
My most recent book project is a major reconsideration of the status of language in the Renaissance, and our own difficulties in appreciating a different linguistic culture:
Jonathan Hope, 2010, Shakespeare and Language: Reason, Eloquence and Artifice in the Renaissance (Arden)
Previous books have also focused on Shakespeare’s language: Shakespeare’s Grammar (Arden: 2003) and The Authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays (Cambridge: 1994).
I also work on modern experimental literature, an interest that began with the stylistic analysis of modern texts: Stylistics: A Practical Coursebook (Routledge: 1996). I teach undergraduate classes in Experimental Fiction and the analysis of Style, and am currently co-supervising two PhDs on experimental and avant-garde writing.
I am currently supervising PhDs in the following areas:
Early Modern Literature/Digital Analysis
Gender in Early Modern Drama: a digital analysis
John Donne
Experimental writing/Literary Linguistics
Visual cognition and literary description
I'm a member of the following Departmental reading/research groups:
Renaissance Research Reading Group
