Joel Davis

Professor of English; Nell Carlton Chair

  • PhD, English, University of Oregon, 1999
  • MA, English, University of Wyoming, 1994
  • BA, English, University of Puget Sound, 1989

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Biography

People sometimes ask me, 'who is this Philip Sidney guy you write about?' And I have to say: Philip Sidney is the paragon of the Elizabethan Age, that's who. Though Sidney lived only 32 years, he changed the course of English literature and a lot more. Research updates are being published here on Restoring Sidney's Arcadia. His unfinished Arcadia is an epic romance and rhetorical tour de force unmatched in any language and was the most popular work of secular literature in English for nearly two centuries after its publication in 1590. His sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, started the Elizabethan sonnet craze and is arguably the greatest sequence in English (Shake-speares Sonnets come nowhere near the formal variety and intricate design of Sidney's sequence). And Sidney's Defence of Poesy is the first full-bodied statement of literary aesthetics in English, a fascinating ethics of writing, and a subtle, urbane, witty rhetorical paradox. If anything, Sidney was more admired on the Continent than in England. The Dutch revere him to this day for all he did in their revolt against Spanish rule: he died of wounds suffered in a raid on Spanish supply lines outside Zutphen. Everybody should read some Sidney - he's nourishment for the soul.

My own biography is more humdrum. I am a native of Wyoming, and I love to be doing things outside. I love the beach and paddleboarding, I love hiking and biking, and I go stir-crazy if I’m indoors too long. My pleasure reading is usually popular science and science fiction. I’m a terrible dancer and singer, but I do those things anyway. And I am a lifelong, loyal Miami Dolphins fan.

More About Joel Davis

Areas of Expertise

  • Shakespeare
  • Elizabeth I (of England)
  • Mary I (of England)
  • Renaissance Literature and Culture
  • Poetry

Course Sampling

  • Women Writers of the Renaissance
  • Renaissance Literature
  • Vengeance and Paranoia
  • British Literature
  • Shakespeare's Great Characters
  • Reading Lyric
  • College Writing

  • Sir Philip Sidney and the Sidney Circle
  • Shakespeare
  • History of reading
  • Manuscript and print culture
  • Digital humanities
  • Poetics
  • Rhetoric
  • Gender theory

  • “Fulke Greville,” in The Routledge Companion to Renaissance Literature, ed. Catherine Bates. Forthcoming.
  • “‘All my spirits ceaz’d’: Interest and Judgment in Rivall Friendship,” in The Rivall Friendship: Introductory Essays, ed. Jean R Brink. Amsterdam University Press, 2025, pp. 157-178.
  • “Early Publication,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philip Sidney, ed. Catherine Bates. Oxford University Press, 2024, pp. 336-354.
  • “Parody and the Perversion of Grace in Caelica,” in Fulke Greville and the Culture of the English Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 121-137.
  • Sir Philip Sidney, Arcadia: A restoration in contemporary English of the complete 1593 edition of The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia. Co-edited with Charles S. Ross (Purdue University). The Parlor Press, 2017.
  • “Sir Philip Sidney.” Oxford Bibliographies Online, Renaissance and Reformation. Ed. Margaret King. Jan. 11, 2017.
  • “Tudor Political Theory and the Sidneys,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to the Sidneys, 1500-1700, vol.2: Literature, eds. Margaret Hannay et al. Ashgate Publishing, 2015, pp. 225-240.
  • The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia and the Invention of English Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  • “‘Thus I restless rest in Spayne’: Engaging Empire in the Poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Garcilaso de la Vega,” Studies in Philology 107.4 (2010): 493-519.
  • “Robert Sidney’s Copy of Tacitus and Leicester’s Campaign in the Low Countries, 1585-86.” The Sidney Journal 20.2 (2006): 1-19.
  • “Multiple Arcadias and the Literary Quarrel between the Countess of Pembroke and Fulke Greville.” Studies in Philology 101 (2004): 401-429.  Reprinted in Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke. Ashgate Critical Essays on Women Writers in England 1500-1700 series, vol. 2. Ed. Margaret P. Hannay. Ashgate: 2009, pp. 285-14.
  • “Paulina’s Paint and the Dialectic of Male Desire in the Metamorphoses, Pandosto, and The Winter's Tale.”  Papers on Language and Literature 39 (2003): 115-143.  Reprinted in Shakespearean Criticism. Ed. Michelle Lee. Vol. 101. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Print and Web.
  • “‘Presidents to themselves’: A Letter to an Honorable Lady, Merciful Commentary, and Ethical Discourse.”  The Sidney Journal 19.1-2 (2001): 161-182.