Dr Theo Van Heijnsbergen
- Lecturer in Scottish Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Scottish Literature)
telephone:
01413304534
email:
Theo.VanHeijnsbergen@glasgow.ac.uk
R401 Level 4, Scottish Literature, 7 University Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QH
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0288-6920Research interests
In summary my research interests are:
- Medieval Scottish literature, especially Robert Henryson and William Dunbar
- Literature in Scots and English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries
- Interaction between English and Scottish writing in the Renaissance period
- Medieval and Early (Modern) literature in Scotland in its interdisciplinary contexts
- Early modern travel writing
Biography
I graduated in 1989 from the University of Nijmegen, with a cum laude degree in Modern British and American Literature and in Old and Middle English Literature, and a subsidiary course component on 'The nineteenth-century Russian novel'. My Masters dissertation was: 'Forgive the Frequent Ego: George Gissing's Heroine's 1889-1893', on the women characters in the novels of the late Victorian novelist George Gissing. I had also spent 1985-86 as an exchange student at the University of Manchester, teaching Dutch in the German department.
In 1989 I started a PhD at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands on sixteenth-century Scottish lyrics in general, and those of Alexander Scott (c.1520 - 1583) in particular, taking up a part-time lecturing post in the English department there in 1992. In 1994 I became a lecturer in the department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, where I developed the sense of humour required to survive such an appointment and where I completed my PhD on mid-sixteenth-century Scottish literary culture.
In addition to researching medieval and Renaissance topics in my present job, I have more recently surprised myself with publications on travel writing, (post)colonial studies, and research and teaching in (it really exists) seventeenth-century Scottish romance and drama.
Grants
British Academy Overseas Conference Travel Grant to address and attend 'Natio Scota. The Thirteenth International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature (Padova, Italy, 22-26 July 2011), and secure the right to organise the fifteenth conference in this series in Glasgow (2017).
Supervision
Postgraduate supervision current and completed
I have supervised post-graduate students on topics in the area of Medieval Scottish poetry and drama, including John Barbour’s Bruce, Kingship and Chivalry in Middle Scots romance; Reynardian fable in William Caxton and Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, David Lindsay, James VI, and Alexander Montgomerie; the reception of classical myth in late medieval and early modern Scotland; Petrarch in seventeenth-century British verse; Renaissance Scottish lyric and the court; seventeenth-century Scottish romance and drama; early modern book history and manuscript circulation; ballads up to 1800; early Scottish eldritch and fantasy literature; modern novel (Alan Warner, A.L. Kennedy, James Kelman, Iain Banks, Janice Galloway, Neil Gunn) and modern critical and cultural theory.
Ph.D thesis (70.000-100.000 words)
- Heather Wells (current), ‘Catherine Trotter Cockburn’
- Rachel Schumm (secondary supervisor with Dr Steven Reid, current), ‘A Study of the Transition in Court Leisure and the Concept of Play in the Courts of Mary, Queen of Scots, 1558-1567’
- Kirsty McRoberts (part-time, current), ‘Transgressions of boundaries: Eldritch lyrics in early modern Scottish Literature’
- Lorna Macbean, (part-time, current, AHRC scholarship), ‘From the Map of my Memory, to the laborious Pen’: The Function of Verse in William Lithgow’s A Most Delectable and True Discourse (1623) with accompanying documentary edition’
- Louise Hutcheson (Carnegie Scholarship, completed 2014), ‘Rhetorics of Martial Virtue: Mapping Scottish Heroic Literature c.1600-1660’
- Gillian Sargent (AHRC grant, completed 2013), ‘“Happy are they that read and understand”: Reading for Moral and Spiritual Acuity in a Selection of Writings by King James VI and I’
- Alexander Cuthbert (AHRC grant, completed 2012), ‘Eternity’s Unbidden Shore: Time in the Writings of Edwin Muir’ (auxiliary supervisor)
- Patrick Hart (completed 2011) ‘“Leaves which whisper’d what they could not say”: Petrarch Reading Early Modern English and Scottish Petrarchism, c.1530-1630’ (external auxiliary supervision with co-promotor at Strathclyde University, under the Synergy agreement)
- Dr Julian Good (part-time, completed 2011), ‘Human Agency in Caxton and Henryson’
- Alistair Braidwood (completed 2011), ‘Existential Thought and Fictional Method in the Modern Scottish Novel’ (joint supervision with Prof. Alan Riach)
- Sebastiaan Verweij (AHRC grant, GlasgowUniversity scholarship and ‘Prins Bernhard` Fonds, completed 2008), ‘”The inlegebill scribling of my imprompt pen”: Production and Circulation of Literary Manuscripts in Jacobean Scotland 1570-1625’
- Christopher Stokoe (completed 2007), ‘Investigation of the Novels of Neil Gunn based on their Coherence as a Single Extended Work’ (as second, departmental supervisor, for external supervisor Dr Margery Palmer McCulloch)
- Robert Groves (completed 2005), ‘”Planned and Purposeful” or “without second thought”: formulaic language and incident in Barbour’s Brus’ (joint supervision with Prof. Jeremy Smith, University of Glasgow, Department of English Language)
- Richard Elins (part-time, Glasgow University Scholarship award, 2005-6), ‘The Vernacular Poetry of Robert Ayton (1569-1638)’
- Morna Fleming (completed 1997), ‘The Impact of the Union of the Crowns on Scottish Lyric Poetry, 1584-1619’
M.Phil thesis by Research (40.000 - 70.000 words)
- David Hay (completed 2002), ‘The Word as Reassurance: Voices of Precaution and Warning in Early Seventeenth-Century Scottish Literature’
M.Litt thesis by Research (30.000 - 40.000 words)
- Rebecca Geddes (current), ‘Sources and interpretation in Robert Henryson’s “Orpheus and Eurydice”’
- Martin McCandlish (current), ‘Crafting Authenticity: Narrative Voice and Structure in Three Modern Scottish Novelists’
- Heather Wells (completed 2018), ‘A Play in Our Nation’?: Can the Drama of Late Seventeenth-Century Scotland be Considered as Restoration Comedy, and Are These Comedies Successful?’
- Gina Lyle (completed 2018), ‘The Different Lives of Motherless Daughters in Contemporary Scottish Women’s Fiction’
- Nia Clark (completed 2017), ‘“Getting By”: The Persistence of Self in the work of Three Contemporary Scottish Writers: Ron Butlin, Janice Galloway and James Robertson’
- Jessica Reid (completed 2016) ‘Devotional Reading and Dissolving the Self. A critical reading of the late medieval Scottish Legendary using Kristevan Theory Older Scottish Saints Lives’
- Amy Brownlee (completed 2015), ‘Whispering Continuities: Mythopoetic Writing and Textual Mobility in the Works of Alan Warner’
- Lorna Macbean (completed 2013), ‘A Documentation Edition of Alexander Craig’s ‘The pilgrim & heremite’ (1631): Print and Manuscript Culture around the Union of the Crowns’
- Danni-Lynn Glover (completed 2013), ‘Studies in language change in Bishop Percy's Reliques of ancient English poetry’ (as secondary supervisor, with Prof. Jeremy J. Smith)
- James Kearney (completed 2013), ‘“Masks of Revelation”: Literary Personae and the Expression of Identity in the Writings of James VI and Alexander Montgomerie’
- Lucy Hinnie (completed 2012), ‘“Dido enflambyt”: The Tragic Queen of Carthage in Gavin Douglas’ Eneados’
- Louise Hutcheson (AHRC grant, completed 2010), ‘“Unpredictable Symmetries”: The Discursive Functions of Early Seventeenth-Century Scottish Romance”’
- Gillian Sargent (AHRC grant, completed 2009), ‘The Scottish Literary Renaissance Reborn: A Re-Evaluation of the Cultural Directives of King James VI, as defined in his Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie (1584)’
- Linden Bicket (Carnegie Scholarship, completed 2008), ‘Depictions of the Feminine in the Shorter Fiction of George Mackay Brown’ (as auxiliary supervisor, with Dr Kirsteen McCue)
- Alexander Cuthbert (AHRC grant, completed 2007), ‘Humanism and Reformation: The Confluence of European Thought in the Regicentric Poetry of David Lyndsay (c.1496-1555)’
- Kirsty McRoberts (completed 2004), ‘Shape Shifting, Metamorphosis and the Cycle of Life and Death in Early Modern Scottish Poetry’
- Melissa Coll (completed 2002), ‘A Penitent Venus: Robert Henryson’s Cresseid and the Fifteenth-Century Magdalene Tradition’
Taught Masters dissertations
As part of Taught Masters courses, I supervised some of the students’ research dissertations. The following merit specific mention:
- Elspeth Guthrie (2009-10), ‘Pilgrimage, Penance and Poetry: the Expression of Conscience in the Poetry of Elizabeth Melville, Lady Culross’ (for SINRS, the Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies Taught M.Litt, taught jointly by Strathclyde University and Glasgow University)
- Andrew Hall (completed 2008) ‘Kingship and Chivalry in Middle Scots Romance: Speculum Principis into Renaissance Government’ (for the Glasgow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Taught M.Litt, GCMRS)
- Patrick Hart (completed 2005) ‘Petrarch, Petrarchisms and the Baroque in England and Scotland: Two Seventeenth-Century Sonnet Sequences’ (30.000 words, for the Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies Taught M.Litt, SINRS, taught jointly by Stirling, Strathclyde and Glasgow University)
- Mhairi-Claire Semple (completed 2000) ‘Re-Thinking History: Post-Modernism and the Interdisciplinary Relationships between History, Literature and Archaeology (Keith Jenkins, Hayden White and Richard Rorty)’ (15.000 words, for Medieval Scottish Studies Taught M.Litt, taught jointly by Glasgow and EdinburghUniversity)
- Hay, Emily
Quenis awne hand’: the literary agency of Mary Queen of Scots in shaping her own public image, 1567-1587
Teaching
Undergraduate level:
- Survey courses in Medieval Renaissance and 18th-century Scottish Literature
- More specialised Honours courses in 'From the Beginnings to the Early Modern in Older Scots Literature' (c.1375-1512) and 'Alternative Renaissances' (c.1513 - 1649)
- Theoretical Approaches to Scottish Literature
- Scottish Literature Dissertation
- Contributing to courses such as 'History of the Scottish Book', 'Scottish Journeys' (travel writing), 'Modern Scottish literature' and Junior Year Abroad courses
Graduate level: Taught Masters courses
- Co-convene and co-teach cross-college Taught Masters course, with Dr Steven Reid (History) as lead convener: 'Politics and Literature in Jacobean Scotland, 1578 - 1603' (5 classes)
- Two 'core' classes in the Taught M.Litt in Medieval and Renaissance Studies (an interdisciplinary one-year Masters course in the Medieval and Renaissance Centre in Glasgow)
- Scottish Institute for Northern Renaissance Studies Taught M.Litt, SINRS, taught jointly by Strathclyde University and Glasgow University
Additional information
- Level 2 Course Convener
- Departmental Staff Committee (member)
- Staff-student committee (member)
- Erasmus European Student Exchanges programme and Junior Year Abroad (departmental representative)
- Interdepartmental Scots Language Committee (departmental representative)
- Key-holder for 7 University Gardens
- ScotLit JISC Mailbase e-mail network (co-supervisor for Scottish Literature and Language list)
- Member of the Executive Committee of the Glasgow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
- Library Committe (departmental representative)
I was Visiting Fellow to the Centre for Renaissance Studies of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Spring 1998. I was Editorial Secretary of the Scottish Text Society (2004-2006), then Executive Officer of that Society (2012-2015) and I am a member of the Colloquium for Scottish Medieval and Renaissance Studies, better known as 'the Scottish Medievalists'.
