PhD student research interests
Joan Addison
I am a part-time student, doing a PhD on the work of the eighteenth-century poet, William Mason. Mason was a well-known, and by many highly-rated, poet in his own time. During the nineteenth century his work fell into disrepute amongst literary critics, being seen increasingly as a type of stereotypical eighteenth-century verse only rescued from its sterility by the advent of romanticism. The purpose of my thesis is to show that, on the contrary, Mason's poetry was a worthy product of, and contributor to, the rich cultural and political discourse of a vibrant century. In doing this, I am exploring four major genres in which Mason wrote: ode, satire, drama and didactic verse.
Mason was the friend and executor of Thomas Gray. The extrovert and productive Mason existed with the retiring and fastidious Gray in a symbiotic relationship which I have explored in a paper given at the University of Leeds conference, Contesting Creativity, in autumn 2008. My interest in Mason extends to the wide cultural, social and political networks in which he was a participant together with Gray, and with other noted figures such as Joshua Reynolds, Richard Hurd and William Wilberforce.