Charles LaPorte is Professor of English at the University of Washington in his hometown of Seattle. He works on the intersection of poetry (or poetic theory) and nineteenth-century religious discourses. His first book, Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible (Virginia, 2011), addresses how Victorian poets wrestle with the implications of modern Biblical criticism. His next, The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare (Cambridge, 2021), explores the extraordinary religious tenor of Victorian Shakespeare criticism. His scholarship has appeared in journals like Nineteenth-Century Literature, ELH, SEL, Victorian Poetry, and Victorian Literature and Culture. With fellow member Jason Rudy, he has co-edited a special issue of Victorian Poetry on “Spasmodic” poetry, and with fellow member Mary Ellis Gibson, he has recently co-edited a Victorian Review forum on the diversity of nineteenth-century Christianity. From his UW office window, he can see Lake Washington and the (truly sublime) northern face of Mount Rainier, as well as the spire of St. Joseph’s Church, a Seattle landmark that his great-grandfather helped to build in the 1920s. Such surroundings doubtless feed his long-standing preoccupation with the religious elements of Romantic and post-Romantic literary culture.
Publications
- “The Dramatic Monologue.” The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature, eds. Dino Felluga, Pamela Gilbert, and Linda K. Hughes. Blackwell/Wiley, 2015: 474-479.
- “Victorian Poetry and Form.” Victorian Literature: Criticism and Debates, eds. Lee Behlman and Anne Longmuir. Routledge, 2015: 37-46.
- “Aurora Leigh, A Life-Drama, and Victorian Poetic Autobiography.” SEL: Studies in English Literature 53.4 (Autumn 2013): 829-851.
- Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible (University of Virginia Press, 2011)
- The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare: Bardology in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2021)