Brian Cummings
Professor Of English (Centre for Literature and Philosophy)

Research

Brian Cummings specializes in many aspects of early modern English literature, especially More, Wyatt, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton; he also works on the history of the Reformation; on the history of theology and of heresy; on the English Bible and the Book of Common Prayer; on medieval and Renaissance philosophy; on humanism, especially Erasmus; on the European Renaissance and the reception of the classics; on grammar, logic and rhetoric; and on literary theory and the philosophy of language.

He has supervised recent Sussex DPhils on early modern topics including Renaissance dictionaries; Milton and civil war writing; Shakespeare and Elizabethan humanism; the Geneva Bible; marriage and widows; the concept of the ruin; and the poetry and religion of Michelangelo. He has also supervised dissertations on modern poetry and on relations between philosophy and literature. He would welcome applications from prospective graduate students in these and related areas.