David Haley is interested in the development of early modern self-consciousness and particularly in how we think about our participation in a changing civic polity“”a community subject to time. For literary study, this means relocating the image of the autonomous self in a wider, social mirror by correlating introspection (psychology) with extrospection (politics). His guiding premise is that history gives us a fuller and more complex reading of human relations than theory can provide. Just like epic or dramatic mimesis, artfully recorded history reflects our experience: “all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of thoughts from within“ (Milton).

Educational Background & Specialties
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Educational Background

  • Ph.D.: English, Harvard University, 1964

Specialties

  • Drama from Aphra Behn to Sheridan
  • The Bible as literature
  • Spenser
  • Sidney
  • Shakespeare
  • Restoration
  • Politics and literature
  • Milton
  • Marvell
  • Machiavelli
  • Hegel and philosophy of history
  • England's civil wars
  • England
  • Dryden
  • History
  • Literature and politics from Machiavelli and Shakespeare to Hegel and Jane Austen