James Brophy

Lecturer in Honors

Office: 145.1 Estabrooke Hall
Email: james.brophy@maine.edu
Phone: TBD

Ph.D., Boston University
B.A., M.A., University of Maine

I am a scholar of 19th and 20th century British and Irish literature. My current work
includes elements of classical reception—how forms and concepts from
Greco-Roman antiquity have been inherited and interpreted. I’ve taught
courses on modernism, aesthetics, poetry, and critical methods; and I also
teach Greek and Roman literature and culture (especially by way of lyric,
dramatic, didactic, and epic poetry).

Why I Teach in Honors:
I love tracing concepts across cultures and time with students. I read with a
philological eye I developed as an undergraduate Latin student—interested in
the structure, history, idiomatic meaning, and philosophical implications of
words and phrases. Practiced sensitivity to the inscape of words and concepts
helps us gain important perspective on our own institutions and ideological
assumptions; it’s also fascinating and fun.

Publications:
I have edited the critical volume Samuel Beckett’s Poetry with William Davies,
(Cambridge University Press, 2022), and I’m currently at work on a project
based on my dissertation about poetry, pessimism, and aesthetic criticism.
Some representative publications include articles on gnosticism in the work of
WWII poet Keith Douglas (Twentieth Century Literature 66.1, 2020); on Walter
Pater, Roland Barthes, and literary aesthetics (Paideuma 45, 2019); and on
Osip Mandelshtam’s inheritance of Ovid (Journal of Translation Studies 11.3,
2018). I’ve also contributed book chapters on love in Beckett’s play Endgame
(Beckett Beyond the Normal, ed. Séan Kennedy, Edinburgh UP, 2020); and
on cliché in Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent (Joseph Conrad and
Postcritique: Politics of Hope, Politics of Fear, ed. Jay Parker and Joyce
Wexler, Palgrave, 2021).