Dr Alice Leonard
I am a Marie Curie Cofund Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Study.
I am researching error in the seventeenth century and how it related to the development of the scientific method. I am interested in how new technology demanded accuracy and evidence which precipitated a different attitude towards error by natural philosophers. Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) is greatly concerned with error but also demonstrates careful attention to correction, in the revisions he made to subsequent editions and his 'correcting' readers. See the conference I organised on this here. I am Co-editor on the Notebooks volume of The Complete Works of Thomas Browne (OUP).
My first monograph, entitled Shakespeare in Error: Error in Shakespeare, is published with Palgrave Macmillan's Shakespeare Studies series, see here. Its central work is to re-value error not just in the material text but as a way of interpreting Shakespeare’s literary style as heavily digressive and figurative, reconnecting error to its earlier meaning not just of mistake but wandering. It examines the different aspects of error to be found within Shakespeare's drama, including the politics of attributing error to particular social groups such as women and foreigners, and the editorial history of the treatment of error in the texts of Shakespeare. You can watch the launch of my book here.
In September 2019 I was a Short-Term Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. I previously held a Swiss National Science postdoctoral fellowship at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford University, and the position of Postdoctoral Fellow in early modern English literature at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. From April 2021 I will be the Byrne-Bussey Marconi Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
I have taught widely in English Literature. I was the convener for 'Shakespeare: Text and Stage' at Warwick CLL and 'Error and Failure in Early Modern Culture' at the University of Neuchatel. I have taught a variety of modules including 'Shakespeare and Selected Dramatists of His Time' and 'Modes of Reading' at Warwick English Department, and 'Critical Issues in Law and Management' at Warwick Business School.
Research Interests:
Seventeenth century prose; metaphor; error; accident; print culture; history of the book; early modern culture; experiment; history of the Royal Society
Selected Publications:
Monograph: Error in Shakespeare: Shakespeare in Error, Palgrave Macmillan Shakespeare Studies Series (2020)
Critical edition: Co-Editor of Thomas Browne’s Notebooks, part of the Complete Works of Thomas Browne, forthcoming with OUP, with Dr Antonia Moon (British Library)
Article: 'City Origins, Lost Identities and Print Errors in The Comedy of Errors’, Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 73, Summer 2020, 9976 words
Article: 'To Nell and Back: Revisiting Mistress Quickly', collaborative research paper, co-authors: Rosemary Gaby (University of Tasmania, Australia), James Mardock (University of Nevada, Reno), Helen Ostovich (McMaster University, Canada) and Alice Leonard, Renaissance Drama, Vol. 47 Issue 7 2019, pp. 201-237
Book Chapter: 'Misprinting and Misreading in The Comedy of Errors', submitted and under contract in Oxford Companion to Printing and Misprinting (OUP), eds., Geri Della Rocca de Candal, Paolo Sachet and Anthony Grafton
Guest blog: 'Shakespeare's Mother Tongue' Beyond Shakespeare blog, Folger Shakespeare Library, September 2017
Review article: ‘How Can a Book Tell Its Own Story?’, response to Emma Smith, Shakespeare's First Folio (OUP, 2016) Cambridge Quarterly, (2017) vol. 46, issue 2
Founder and editor of blog of Shakespeare and early modern academic and public activities in Switzerland, Swisspeare, 2015-2017
Article: ‘“Enfranchised” Language in "The Dutch Courtesan" and "Henry V"’, Cahiers Élisabéthains, vol. 84, Autumn, 2013, pp. 1-13
Article: Co-authored with Dr. Johann Gregory, ‘Assuming Gender in "Hamlet" and "Troilus and Cressida": “Are we to assume that there were women in the audience?”’, in Assuming Gender, vol. 1, 2, 2010, pp. 44-61
Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (ABES) permanent reviewer of books and articles on Renaissance and early modern literature, 2010-13
Selected Conference Papers:
Paper: 'Pleasure in Spenser's Vale of Error', Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Washington DC (US), April 2019
Invited speaker, University of Geneva, 'Colonial Travel Writing and the Rise of Prose Fiction in the Long Seventeenth Century', December 2016
Paper: 'Mists of Error: A Reformation Image', Conference at the University of Zurich, 'What is an Image?', September 2016
Paper: ‘Metaphor: Failure or Poetry in Midsummer Night’s Dream?’, Renaissance Society of America conference, Boston (US), March 2016
Invited speaker, 'Metaphor in Shakespeare', Queen's University, Canada, Satellite Campus Herstmonceux Castle, UK, January 2016
Paper: ‘Error in The Comedy of Errors’ at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Vancouver, Canada, April 2015
@wanderlanderr