William James Simpson is an Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n academic.

Education

• Educated at Scotch College
  Scotch College, Melbourne
  Scotch College, Melbourne is an independent, Presbyterian, day and boarding school for boys, located in Hawthorn, an inner-eastern suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia....
  
   (1966–1971)
• Arts
  Bachelor of Arts
  A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
  
   Degree with Honours at Melbourne University, Melbourne (1976)
• Master of Philosophy
  Master of Philosophy
  The Master of Philosophy is a postgraduate research degree.An M.Phil. is a lesser degree than a Doctor of Philosophy , but in many cases it is considered to be a more senior degree than a taught Master's degree, as it is often a thesis-only degree. In some instances, an M.Phil...
  
  , University of Oxford
  University of Oxford
  The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
  
   1980
• Doctor of Philosophy
  Doctor of Philosophy
  Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
  
   (PhD), University of Cambridge (1996)

Work Life

Simpson has worked in academia in Australia, the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and The United States of America focusing on Medieval Literature

Medieval literature

Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...

 more recently on Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 and Early Modern

Early modern period

In history, the early modern period of modern history follows the late Middle Ages. Although the chronological limits of the period are open to debate, the timeframe spans the period after the late portion of the Middle Ages through the beginning of the Age of Revolutions...

 literature and culture from 1150-1600.

Appointments

• Tutor in English Literature and Language, University of Melbourne (1977–1978)
• Lecturer in English Literature, Westfield College, University of London
  University of London
  -20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
  
   1981-89
• Lecturer, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge (1989–1999)
• Official Fellow and College Lecturer, Girton College
  Girton College, Cambridge
  Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...
  
  , University of Cambridge (1989–1999)
• Professor
  Professor
  A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
  
   of Medieval and Renaissance English
  English Renaissance
  The English Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement in England dating from the late 15th and early 16th centuries to the early 17th century. It is associated with the pan-European Renaissance that is usually regarded as beginning in Italy in the late 14th century; like most of northern...
  
  , University of Cambridge
  University of Cambridge
  The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
  
   (1999–2003)
• Professorial Fellow
  Research fellow
  The title of research fellow is used to denote a research position at a university or similar institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a principal investigator...
  
  , Girton College, University of Cambridge (1999–2003)
• Life Fellow, Girton College, University of Cambridge (2003)
• Professor of English and American Literature, Harvard University (2004–2006)
• Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard University (2006-)
• College Professor, Harvard University (2008-)
• Chair of Harvard University English Department (2010-)

Awards

• Silver Medal, Independent Publisher Book Awards - Religion category (2008)
• British Academy
  British Academy
  The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...
  
   Sir Israel Gollancz
  Israel Gollancz
  Sir Israel Gollancz was a scholar of early English literature and of Shakespeare. He was Professor of English Language and Literature at King's College, London, from 1903 to 1930....
  
   Prize - Reform and Cultural Revolution (2007)
• Honorary Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities
  Australian Academy of the Humanities
  The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia...
  
   (2003)
• John Hurt Fisher Prize - “Significant Contribution to the Field of John Gower Studies,” John Gower
  John Gower
  John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
  
   Society (2003)
• Jane Herbert Memorial Fellowship, Westfield College, University of London
  University of London
  -20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...
  
   (1987)
• Paget Toynbee
  Paget Toynbee
  Paget Jackson Toynbee was a UK Dante scholar. Robert Hollander has described Toynbee as 'the most influential Dantean scholar of his time'.-Works:*The Letters of Horace Walpole. 16 volumes....
  
   Dante Alighieri
  DANTE
  Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...
  
   Prize, Oxford University (1980)

Work

His early work centred around literary analysis

Literary criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...

 of poetry, especially the late 14th century English poem, Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus"...

. He later worked on Medieval Humanism

Renaissance humanism

Renaissance humanism was an activity of cultural and educational reform engaged by scholars, writers, and civic leaders who are today known as Renaissance humanists. It developed during the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, and was a response to the challenge of Mediæval...

. In 2002, he published an award winning literary history. His most recent work, "Burning to Read" centres on the fundamentalist

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is strict adherence to specific theological doctrines usually understood as a reaction against Modernist theology. The term "fundamentalism" was originally coined by its supporters to describe a specific package of theological beliefs that developed into a movement within the...

 Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

reading in the early 16th century.

Simpson frequently lectures internationally and reviews books extensively for a range of publications.

Simpson contributes to many organisations and societies focussing on literature.

Books: Author

• Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library, 1 (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990)
• Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille’s “Anticlaudianus” and John Gower’s “Confessio amantis,” Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 25 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Reform and Cultural Revolution, 1350-1547, Vol 2 of The Oxford English Literary History, General Editor Jonathan Bate (Oxford University Press, 2002)
• Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text, second, revised edition (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2007)
• Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007)
• Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford University Press USA, 2011)

Books: Editor

• The Norton Anthology of English Literature, General Editors Stephen Greenblatt and M. H. Abrams; “The Middle Ages”, ed. Alfred David and James Simpson (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 1-484
• John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006)
• http://books.google.com.au/books?id=q9mQWP4l4fsC&dq=Images,+Idolatry+and+Iconoclasm+in+Late+Medieval+England&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=qMo6QDmD7i&sig=0bWsNelCrmPhCcvNSduneVDiKXc&hl=en&ei=rT4HS-m0J4GC7QPp6d2EAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=falseImages, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), xiv + 250 pp. 2005]
• Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986, 250 pp. 133–153

Books: Contributor

• "Parisian Libraries" for The Index of Middle English Prose, General Editor A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989)
• “The Rule of Medieval Imagination,” in Images, Idolatry and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England, edited by Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson and Nicolette Zeeman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
• The Power of impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman - James Simpson in William Langland's Piers Plowman: a book of essays - Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith (Editor)
• Desire and the Scripural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman - James Simpson in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages - Rita Copeland (Editor)
• “Rhetoric, Conscience and the Playful Positions of Sir Thomas More” for The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Literature, 1485-1603, edited by Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 121-36
• “Sixteenth-Century Fundamentalism and the Specter of Ambiguity, or The Literal Sense is Always a Fiction” for Writing Fundamentlism, Klaus Stierstorfer (ed.) with Axel Stähler (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 133-54
• “John Lydgate,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Literature, edited by Larry Scanlon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 205-16
• “The Economy of Involucrum: Idleness in Reason and Sensuality,” in Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee, Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager(University of Toronto Press, 2009), 390-414
• “Vernacular Literary Consciousness, c. 1100 – c. 1500: French, German and English Evidence,” with Kevin Brownlee, Tony Hunt, Ian Johnson, Alastair Minnis, and Nigel F. Palmer, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol 2, The Middle Ages, Eds. Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 422-71
• “Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies,” in Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, edited by David Matthews and Gordon McMullan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 17-30
• “An Appendix of Literary Terms,” in Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8, Co-Editor Alfred David, General Editor Stephen Greenblatt (W. W. Norton: New York. 2006), 19 pages
• “Subjects of Triumph and Literary History: Dido and Petrarch in Petrarch’s Trionfi and Africa,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005): 489-508. Translated and republished as “Soggetti di trionfo e storia letteraria: Didone e Petrarca nell’Africa e nei Trionfi di Petrarca,” in Petrarca: canoni, esemplarità, edited by Valeria Finucci (Rome: Bulzoni, 2006), 73-92
• “Saving Satire after Arundel: John Audelay’s Marcol and Solomon,”in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, edited by Ann Hutchison and Helen Barr (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 387-404
• “Pecock and Fortescue,” for A Companion to Middle English Prose, edited by A. S. G. Edwards (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 271–88
• “Violence, Narrative and Proper Name: Sir Degaré, “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney,” and the Anglo-Norman Folie Tristan dOxford,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, ed. Jane Gilbert and Ad Putter (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 122-41
• “Hoccleve,” “Usk” and “Beast Fable” entries for Medieval England: An Encyclopaedia, General Editor, Paul E. Szarmach (New York: Garland, 1998), 111-12.
• “The Sacrifice of Lady Rochford: Henry Parker’s Translation of De claris mulieribus,” in http://books.google.com.au/books?id=nHVnAAAAMAAJ&q=Triumphs+of+English:+Henry+Parker,+Lord+Morley,+Translator+to+the+Tudor+Court&dq=Triumphs+of+English:+Henry+Parker,+Lord+Morley,+Translator+to+the+Tudor+Court&client=firefox-aTriumphs of English: Henry Parker, Lord Morley, Translator to the Tudor Court. New Essays in Interpretation, edited by Marie Axton and James P. Carley (London: British Library Publications, 2000)], pp. 153–69
• “The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman,” in William Langland’s Piers Plowman: A Book of Essays, edited by K M. Hewett-Smith (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 145–165
• “Humanism,” in Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1. William Chester Jordan, Editor in Chief (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2004), pp. 279–82
• “Contemporary English Writers,” in A Companion to Chaucer, edited by Peter Brown (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 114–32
• ““Dysemol daies and Fatal houres”: Lydgate’s Destruction of Thebes and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale,” in The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays in Honour of Douglas Gray, edited by H Cooper and S Mapstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 15-33
• “Desire and the Scriptural Text: Will as Reader in Piers Plowman,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, edited by Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 215–43
• ““Ut Pictura Poesis”: A Critique of Robert Jordan’s Chaucer and the Shape of Creation,” in Interpretation Medieval and Modern: J.A.W.Bennett Memorial Lectures, eighth series, edited by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-87
• “Nobody’s Man: Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes,” in London and Europe, edited by Julia Boffey and Pamela King (London: Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 1995), pp. 150–80
• “Madness and Texts: Hoccleve’s Series,” in Chaucer and Fifteenth Century Poetry, edited by Janet Cowen and Julia Boffey, King’s College London Medieval Studies, 5 (London: King’s College, London, 1991), pp. 15–29
• “The Constraints of Satire in Mum and the Sothsegger and Piers Plowman,” in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition, edited by Helen Phillips (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 11–30
• “The Role of Scientia in Piers Plowman,” in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G.H.Russell, edited by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 49–65

Articles

• “Open, Closed and Divided Books: Reflections on the Two Cambridges,“ Girton College Annual Review, 2004-5 (Girton College Cambridge), pp. 18–20
• “George Harrison Russell (1923-2006),” Proceedings, Australian Academy of the Humanities (2006), 46-49
• “Literature on Foot”, for What’s the Word?, NPR, 2007
• “Crisis in the Humanities? What Crisis?”, in “Off the Page: Harvard University Press Author Forum”
• “Why Liberals are Weak Faced with Fundamentalism,” History News Network, posted 25 February 2008, at http://hnn.us/articles/46753.html
• Appearance on “John Leland’s Travels” BBC Radio 3, Sunday 26 April 2009.
• “Tyndale as Promoter of Figural Allegory and Figurative Language: A Brief Declaration of the Sacraments,” for Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 245 (2008): 37-55
• “Bonjour Paresse: Literary Waste and Recycling in Book 4 of Gower’s Confessio amantis,” The Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Publications of the British Academy, 151 (2007), 257-84
• “Making History Whole: Diachronic History and the Shortcomings of Medieval Studies”, in e-Colloquia, 3 (2005), at http://www.ecolloquia.com/issues/200501/index.html
• “Confessing Literature,” English Language Notes 44 (2006): 121-26
• “Chaucer as a European Writer,” in The Yale Companion to Chaucer, ed. Seth Lerer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 55-86
• “Consuming Ethics: Caxton’s History of Reynard the Fox,” in Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood, edited by Alan Fletcher and Anne-Marie D’Arcy (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), pp. 321–36
• “Not the Last Word,” being a reply to review articles for a number of JMEMS wholly dedicated to consideration of Reform and Cultural Revolution, JMEMS, 35 (2005), 111-19.
• “Martyrdom in the Literal Sense: Surrey’s Psalm Paraphrases,” Medieval and Early Modern English Studies (South Korea), 12 (2004), 133-165
• “Chaucer’s Presence and Absence, 1400-1550,” A Chaucer Companion, edited by Jill Mann and Piero Boitani, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 251–69
• “Faith and Hermeneutics: Pragmatism versus Pragmatism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 33 (2003), 215-39
• “Grace Abounding: Evangelical Centralisation and the End of Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies, 14 (2000), 1-25
• “Bulldozing the Middle Ages: the Case of “John Lydgate,” New Medieval Literatures, 4 (2000), 213-42
• “Medieval Literature, Class 1,” in The Virtual Classroom, http://www.english.cam.ac.uk/vclass/virtclas.htm, 2000-
• “Breaking the Vacuum: Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 29 (1999), 325-55
• “Ethics and Interpretation: Reading Wills in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 20 (1998), 73-100
• “Ageism: Leland, Bale and the Laborious Start of English Literary History, 1350-1550,” New Medieval Literatures, 1 (1997), 213-35
• “The Death of the Author?: Skelton’s Bowge of Court,” in The Timeless and the Temporal, Writings in Honour of John Chalker, edited by Elizabeth Maslen (London: Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1993), pp. 58–79
• “The Information of Genius in Book III of the Confessio Amantis,” Mediaevalia, 16 (1993, for 1990), 159-95
• “’After Craftes Conseil clotheth yow and fede’: Langland and the City of London,” in England in the Fourteenth Century, Proceedings of the Harlaxton Conference, 1991, edited by N. Rogers (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1993), pp. 111-129
• “The Information of Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus: a Preposterous Interpretation,” Traditio 47 (1992), 113-160
• “Poetry as Knowledge: Dante’s Paradiso XIII,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, 25 (1989), 329-43
• “Ironic Incongruence in the Prologue and Book I of Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” Neophilologus, 72 (1988), 617-32
• “Spirituality and Economics in Passus I-VII of the B-Text of Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 1 (1987), 83- 103
• “From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman,” Medium Aevum, 55 (1986), 1-23
• “The Transformation of Meaning: a Figure of Thought in Piers Plowman,” Review of English Studies, n.s. 37 (1986), 1-23
• “Dante’s “Astripetam Aquilam” and the Theme of Poetic Discretion in the House of Fame,” Essays and Studies, n.s. 39 (1986), 1-18
• “Et Vidit Deus Cogitationes Eorum: a Parallel Instance and Possible Source for Langland’s Use of a Biblical Formula at Piers Plowman B.XV.200a,” Notes and Queries, n.s. 33 (1986), 9-13
• “Spiritual and Earthly Nobility in Piers Plowman,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 86 (1985), 467-81