Professor Kiernan Ryan k.j.p.ryan@rhul.ac.uk

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KIERNAN RYAN was educated at the University of Cambridge, winning a Scholarship to Christ’s College (1968-71), where he took a First in English, and then moving to Corpus Christi College (1971-5) to teach and to undertake research on Renaissance literature. He was a lecturer at the University of Geneva (1975-80) and at Wadham College, Oxford (1980-1) before taking up the post of Fellow and Director of Studies in English at New Hall, Cambridge (1981-97). He was awarded a doctorate by the Universiteit van Amsterdam in 1995. In 1997 he was appointed Professor of English Language and Literature and Head of Department at Royal Holloway, University of London; in the same year he was elected to an Emeritus Fellowship of New Hall.

Professor Ryan has been invited to lecture on Shakespeare, literary theory and modern British fiction by universities throughout Europe (Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland), in Egypt, Mexico and in the United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a founding Fellow of the English Association, and a member of the International Association of University Professors of English, the Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, the Shakespeare Association of America and the International Shakespeare Association. He is also a founder member of the International Walter Benjamin Association and on the editorial board of the Benjamin Bulletin.

Professor Ryan’s broadcasting experience includes numerous contributions to BBC Radio 4 arts programmes, the Open University/BBC TV series, Shakespeare: Text and Performance, for which he was the Editorial Consultant, and the interactive commentary for BBC 4’s live TV broadcast of Measure for Measure from Shakespeare’s Globe in 2004. He has also written for The Guardian and is a regular book reviewer for the Independent on Sunday and the Times Higher Education Supplement. He designed and directs the Shakespeare MA launched at Royal Holloway in 1998 and is a member of the editorial board of Shakespeare: Journal of the British Shakespeare Association.

Kiernan Ryan is the author of Shakespeare (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989; 2nd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995; 3rd ed., Palgrave, 2002) and Ian McEwan (Writers & Their Work, Northcote House, 1994), and the editor of King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1993), New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader (Edward Arnold, 1996), Shakespeare: The Last Plays (Longman, 1999) and Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (Macmillan, 2000). He wrote the Introduction to the new Penguin Shakespeare edition of King Lear (2005) and his latest book, Shakespeare: The Comedies was published in 2009 by Palgrave.

Kiernan Ryan is the author of:

• Shakespeare (Harvester, 1989; 2nd edn, Prentice Hall, 1995; 3rd edn, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
• Ian McEwan (Writers & Their Work series, Northcote House, 1994; 2nd edition forthcoming 2009)
• Shakespeare: The Comedies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)

and editor of:

• King Lear: Contemporary Critical Essays (Macmillan, 1993)
• New Historicism and Cultural Materialism: A Reader (Edward Arnold, 1996)
• Shakespeare: The Last Plays (Longman, 1999)
• Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts (Macmillan, 1999)

and wrote the introduction to: King Lear, The Penguin Shakespeare (London: Penguin, 2005).

Selected Essays

• ‘The Extemporal Vein: Thomas Nashe and the Invention of Modern Narrative’, in Narrative: From Malory to Motion Pictures, ed. Jeremy Hawthorn (London: Edward Arnold, 1985), pp. 41-54.

• The Revenge of the Women: Lawrence’s Tickets, Please’, reprinted in David Ellis and Ornella de Zordo (eds), D. H. Lawrence: Critical Assessments, 4 vols (Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992), vol. III, pp. 503-14.

• ‘Revelation and Repression in Conrad’s Nostromo’, in Modern Critical Interpretations: Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), pp. 43-55.

• ‘Re-reading The Merchant of Venice’, in Major Literary Characters: Shylock, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1991), pp. 79-84.

• ‘King Lear: The Battle for The Bard’, in Critical Dialogues: Current Issues in English Studies in Germany and Britain, ed. Isobel Armstrong and Hans-Werner Ludwig (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1995), pp. 28-40.

• ‘The Future of History in Henry IV’, in Theory in Practice: Henry IV, ed. Nigel Wood (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995), pp. 92-125.

• ‘James Stephens’, Dictionary of Literary Biography 153: Late Victorian and Edwardian British Novelists, ed. George M. Johnson (Detroit: Gale, 1995), pp. 295-305.
  

• ‘Sex, Violence and Complicity: Martin Amis and Ian McEwan’, in An Introduction to Contemporary Fiction: International Writing in English Since 1970, ed. Rod Mengham (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), pp. 203-18.

• ‘Playing for Time: Improvising and Anachronism in Shakespearean Comedy’, in Die Wunde der Geschichte: Aufsätze zur Literatur und Ästhetik, ed. Klaus Garber and H. Gustav Klaus, Europäische Kulturstudien Band 11 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 1999), pp. 45-56.

• ‘The Future of Shakespeare’, in Shakespeare: Texts and Contexts, ed. Kiernan Ryan (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 305-8.

• ‘The Malcontent: Hunting the Letter’, in The Drama of John Marston: Critical Re-Visions, ed. T.F. Wharton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 145-61.
  

• ‘Measure for Measure: Marxism Before Marx’, in Marxist Shakespeares, ed. Jean Howard and Scott Shershow (New York and London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 227-44.

• ‘Shakespeare and the Future’, in Talking Shakespeare: Shakespeare into the Millennium, ed. Deborah Cartmell and Michael Scott (Basingstoke and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp.187-200.

• ‘The Murdering Word’, in Romeo and Juliet: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. R.S. White (Basingstoke and London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), pp. 116-28.

• ‘King Lear: A Retrospect, 1980-2000’, Shakespeare Survey 55 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 1-11.

• ‘The Future of History: 1 and 2 Henry IV’, reprinted in Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. R. J. C. Watt, Longman Critical Readers (London: Longman, 2002), pp. 147-68.

• ‘Shakespearean Comedy and Romance: The Utopian Imagination’, in Shakespeare’s Romances: Contemporary Critical Essays, ed. Alison Thorne (London and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 27-52.

• ‘Deconstruction: Romeo and Juliet’, in Shakespeare: An Oxford Guide, ed. Stanley Wells and Lena Cowen Orlin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 508-24.

• ‘King Lear’, in A Companion to Shakespeare, Volume 1: The Tragedies, ed. Richard Dutton and Jean Howard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 375-92.

• ‘Introduction’ to Iris Murdoch, Under the Net (London: Vintage, 2002; Vintage Classics Limited Edition, 2003), pp. ix-xvii.

• ‘Introduction’ and ‘The Play in Performance’ plus annotated ‘Further Reading’, in King Lear, The Penguin       Shakespeare (London: Penguin, 2005), pp. xxi - lxxxiii.

• ‘Pagosmios Saixpir: e politiki tis ikiopoiesis’ [‘Global Shakespeare: the Politics of Appropriation’], in E Prosarmostikotita tou Saixpir [Shakespeare’s Adaptability], ed. Tina Krontiris (Athens: Ergo, 2004), pp. 19-43.

• ‘“Where Hope is Coldest”: All’s Well That Ends Well’, in Spiritual Shakespeares, ed. Ewan Fernie, Accents on Shakespeare (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 28-49.

• ‘After the Fall’, in Ian McEwan’s ‘Enduring Love’, ed. Peter Childs (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 44-54.

• ‘Troilus and Cressida: The Perils of Presentism’, in Presentist Shakespeares, ed. Terence Hawkes and Hugh Grady, Accents on Shakespeare (New York and London: Routledge, 2007), 164-83.

• ‘Measure for Measure: Marxism before Marx’, in Shakespearean Criticism 106, ed. Michelle Lee (Detroit: Gale, 2007).

• Growing Pains: First Love, Last Rites’, in Short Story Criticism 106, ed. Jelena Krstovic (Detroit: Gale, 2008).

•  ‘“Where Hope is Coldest”: All’s Well That Ends Well’, reprinted in Shakespearean Criticism 114, ed. Michelle Lee (Detroit: Gale, 2008).

•  ‘Shakespeare’s Universality: The Politics of Appropriation’, in The Difference of Shakespeare, ed. Alessandra Marzola (Bergamo: Bergamo University Press, 2008), pp.17-35.

         

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