Hope College | English

John Cox

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COX, JOHN, DuMez Professor of English (1979).

Education: B.A., Hope College (1967); M.A., University of Chicago (1968); Ph.D., University of Chicago (1975).

Interests: Renaissance Drama, Shakespeare.

Selected Works: Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power (1989); A New History of Early English Drama (1997, Association for Theatre in Higher Education Book of the Year); The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642 (2000, David Bevington Prize finalist); Co-editor, Shakespeare's 3 Henry VI, Third Arden Edition, Arden Shakespeare (2001); Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith (2007).

Distinctions: NEH Fellowship (2004-05); Pew Charitable Trusts Fellowship (1995-96); NEH Summer Stipend (1993); Summer Teaching Appointment (University of California, Berkeley, 1988); NEH Fellowship (1985-86); Summer Teaching Appointment (Harvard, 1979); Mellon Faculty Fellow (Harvard, 1978-79).

Publications:

Seeming Knowledge: Shakespeare and Skeptical Faith (Baylor University Press, 2007).
"Seeming Knowledge is impressive not only for its vast, in-depth coverage of Shakespeare's works, but also for its compelling argumentation. John Cox is extremely well-read in early Tudor and Elizabethan theater and also in the works of Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal and others. His application of these works to Shakespeare is subtle and original. His book is in fact a powerful invitation to rethink our usual understanding of skepticism in the Renaissance and in Shakespeare. By being skeptical of skepticism, Cox profoundly redefines our view of Shakespeare's relation to faith and religion. This work is a major contribution to the field." --Dr. Jean-Christophe Mayer

with Eric Rasmussen, editors, Shakespeare's King Henry VI, Part 3 (London: Thomson Learning for the Arden Shakespeare, Third Edition, 2001).
This is a completely new edition of Shakespeare's early history play. Professor Cox wrote the introduction, the notes, the appendices, and the index. The Arden Shakespeare is the foremost scholarly edition of Shakespeare. The first series was published early in the twentieth century; the second, in the mid-twentieth. This is the first series for the twenty-first century.

The Devil and the Sacred in English Drama, 1350-1642 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
A complete survey of plays that include staged devils from the beginning of drama in English to the closing of the theaters by parliament in 1642. The book argues that the pattern for staging devils was established in pre-Reformation drama and remained virtually unchanged by the Reformation. Important vestiges of that pattern continued to appear in commercial plays (including two by Shakespeare) until the effective end of the tradition in the mid-seventeenth century.

with David Scott Kastan, A New History of Early English Drama (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
This is a collection of twenty-five completely new essays that the editors requested from as many scholars of early drama. The book was planned by eleven former students of David M. Bevington at the University of Chicago, and it is dedicated to him. The book won the Book of the Year Award for 1997 from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and one essay, by Peter W. M. Blayney, won a separate award from Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. The foreword is by Stephen J. Greenblatt.

Shakespeare and the Dramaturgy of Power (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
This is a study of Shakespeare's plays against the background of medieval religious drama. The argument is that the radical social and political dimensions of Shakespeare are often, anticipated by his prececessors on the English stage, who therefore offer a more credible explanation for the plays' outlook than those typically offered by New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. In short, the book argues that postmodern critics of Shakespeare are often right but for the wrong reasons.