David Norbrook is Merton Professor

Merton Professors

There are two Merton Professorships of English in the University of Oxford: the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, and the Merton Professor of English Literature. The second was created in 1914 when Sir Walter Raleigh's chair was renamed...

 of Renaissance English literature at Oxford University. He is a fellow

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term fellow is also used to describe a person, particularly by those in the upper social classes. It is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is often part of an elite group of learned people who are awarded...

 of Merton College, Oxford. He specializes in literature, politics and historiography in the early modern period, and in early modern women's writing. He is currently writing a biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 and edition of Lucy Hutchinson

Lucy Hutchinson

Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson was an English biographer as well as the first translator into English of the complete text of Lucretius's De Rerum Natura during the years of the interregnum .-Biography:...

. He teaches in literary theory

Literary theory

Literary theory in a strict sense is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for analyzing literature. However, literary scholarship since the 19th century often includes—in addition to, or even instead of literary theory in the strict sense—considerations of...

 and early modern texts, in early modern women writers, and in Shakespeare, Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 and Marvell

Andrew Marvell

Andrew Marvell was an English metaphysical poet, Parliamentarian, and the son of a Church of England clergyman . As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert...

. Before his current role, he taught at the University of Maryland

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

.

Norbrook was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School

Aberdeen Grammar School, known to students as The Grammar is a state secondary school in the City of Aberdeen, Scotland. It is one of twelve secondary schools run by the Aberdeen City Council educational department...

, the University of Aberdeen

University of Aberdeen

The University of Aberdeen, an ancient university founded in 1495, in Aberdeen, Scotland, is a British university. It is the third oldest university in Scotland, and the fifth oldest in the United Kingdom and wider English-speaking world...

 and Balliol College, Oxford. He became fellow and tutor in English Language and Literature at Magdalen College

Magdalen College, Oxford

Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...

, Oxford in 1978. He is the author of Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance (Routledge

Routledge

Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...

, 1984), Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627-1660 (Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press

Cambridge University Press is the publishing business of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by Henry VIII in 1534, it is the world's oldest publishing house, and the second largest university press in the world...

, 2000) and The Penguin Book of Renaissance Verse (with H.R. Woudhuysen).

Academic studies

Professor Norbrook's historiographical studies of Renaissance English Literature explain the poetry, drama and prose writings of the period 1509-1659 in the political context of the period. Renaissance English poetry was closely involved with affairs of state: some poets held high office, others wrote to influence those in power and to sway an increasingly independent public opinion. In Poetry and Politics in the English Renaissance, Norbrook explains the political context and events that influenced writers such as Sir Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

, Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

, and John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

.

Norbrook's work shares a certain affinity with that of Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Greenblatt

Stephen Jay Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar.Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term...

, although Norbrook is not regarded as a member of the new historicist school.

Norbrook has championed the work of minor and neglected poets from the Renaissance period.