Murray Evans

Background

Born to Western Canadian parents who relocated to the East, Murray Evans grew up and was educated in southern Ontario. After visiting appointments at UM, UBC, and UVic, he was hired as a medievalist at UW in the English Department. His later research and publications took him to the Romantic period, with a focus on the writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He is now Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Winnipeg and Retired Fellow at St John’s College. Having studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto) and the then Banff School of Fine Arts, his avocation has been as an amateur classical concert pianist, including performances in Winnipeg over the last couple of decades.

Education

  • BA in English and History (Hons, Trent University)

  • MA and PhD in English (Queen’s University)

  • ARCT (Piano Performance, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto).

Course List

Before retirement, he taught medieval literature and medievalism, Coleridge, children’s literature, “Inklings” C.S. Lewis et al., literary history, and literary and cultural theory.

 

Publications

Books

  • Coleridge’s Sublime Later Prose: Kristeva, Adorno, Rancière. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
  • Sublime Coleridge: The Opus Maximum. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
  • Rereading Middle English Romance: Physical Layout, Decora­tion and the Rhetoric of Composite Structure in Some Late Medieval Manu­script Collections. Montreal: McGill-Queen's Uni­versity Press, 1995.

 

Contributions to Books

  • “Coleridge’s Sublime and Rhetorical Interpretation of New Testament Texts" in Roy R. Jeal, ed., Exploring Sublime Rhetoric in Biblical Literature. Emory Studies in Early Christianity 28. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2024. 111-31.
  • “C.S. Lewis and Coleridge, Revisited: The Abolition of Man,” in The Inklings and Culture: A Harvest of Scholarship from the Inklings Institute of Canada, eds. Monika B. Hilder, Sara L. Pearson, and Laura N. Van Dyke. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. 42-56.
  • “Very like a Whale”?: Physical Features and the ‘Whole Book’ in Laud Misc. 108,” in Texts and Contexts in Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108, eds. Kimberly Bell and Julie Nelson Couch. Leiden: Brill, 2011. 51-69.
  • “Coleridge as Thinker: Logic and Opus Maximum,” The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Frederick Burwick. London & New York: Oxford UP, 2009. 323-41.
  • “Reading ‘Will’ in Coleridge’s Opus Maximum: The Rhetoric of Transition and Repetition,” in Jeffrey Barbeau, ed., Coleridge’s Assertion of Religion: Essays on the Opus Maximum. Studies in Philosophical Theology. Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 2006. 73-96.
  • "Coleridge's Sublime and Langland's Subject in the Pardon Scene of Piers Plowman," in From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday, eds A.E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland. Ottawa: Actempress, University of Ottawa, 1999. 155-74.
  • "Manuscript Studies: New Directions for Appreciat­ing Middle English Romance," in From Medieval to Medi­evalism, ed. John Simons. London: Macmillan, 1992. 8-23.
  • "'Making Strange': The Narrator (?), the Ending (?), and Chau­cer's Troilus," reprinted in C. David Benson, ed. Criti­cal Essays on Chau­cer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and His Major Early Poems. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991. 164-75.
  • "C.S. Lewis' Narnia Books: The Reader in the Myth," in Touch­stones: Reflec­tions on the Best in Children's Litera­ture, vol. I, ed. Perry Nodelman. Children's Literature Asso­ciation Publications, 1985. 132-45.
  • "Ordinatio and Narrative Links: The Impact of Malory's Tales as a "hoole book,'" in Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985. 29-52.

 

Journal Articles

  • “Coleridge’s Sublime and On the Constitution of the Church and State (1829).” The Coleridge Bulletin New Series 49 (NS) (Summer 2017): 45-52.
  • “Sublime Discourse and Romantic Religion in Coleridge’s Aids to Reflection.” The Wordsworth Circle 47.1 (2016): 27-31.
  • “Coleridge’s Sublime Hermeneutics in Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit.” The Coleridge Bulletin New Series 45 (NS) (Summer 2015): 39-44.
  • (Moderator). “A Panel of Papers on the Opus Maximum.” The Coleridge Bulletin New Series 38 (NS) (Winter 2011): 85–110.
  •  “Introduction” and “The Opus Maximum and Beyond.” The Coleridge Bulletin New Series 38 (NS) (Winter 2011): 85, 106–10.
  • “The Divine Ideas in Coleridge’s Opus Maximum.” The Coleridge Bulletin (New Series) 22 (2003): 39-47.
  • "Piers Plowman and the Sublime." Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1997): 421-40.
  • "'Making Strange': The Narrator (?), the Ending (?), and Chaucer's Troilus," Neuphilolog­ische Mittei­lungen (U. of Helsinki) 2/LXXXVII (1986): 218-28.
  • "The Two Scribes in the Winchester MS.: The Ninth Explicit and Malor­y's 'Hoole Book,'" Manuscripta (St. Louis Univer­sity Library) 27 (1983): 38-44.
  • "Camelot or Corbenic?: Malory's New Blend of Secu­lar and Religious Chivalry in the 'Tale of the Holy Grail,'" English Studies in Canada 8 (1982): 249-61.
  • "The Explicits and Narrative Division in the Win­chester MS.: A Cri­tique of Vinaver's Malory," Philological Quarter­ly 58 (1979): 263-81.

 

Selected Book Reviews

  • Ewan James Jones, Coleridge and the Philosophy of Poetic Form (Cambridge UP, 2014), a review for The Wordsworth Circle 47.4 (Autumn 2016): 165-67.
  • Review of Thomas McFarland and Nicholas Halmi, eds., The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Opus Maximum (Princeton University Press, 2002), for European Romantic Review 14 (2003): 493-96.
  • Review essay on Bonnie Wheeler et al., eds., The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur (D.S. Brewer, 2000), for Envoi 10 (2001): 83-94.
  • Review essay on Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards, eds., A Companion to Malory (D.S. Brewer, 1996), in Envoi 6 (1997): 15-24.
  • "Golden Stories, Golden Age," a review of Patricia Demers, ed., A Garland from the Golden Age: An Anthology of Children’s Literature from 1850 to 1900 (Oxford UP, 1983), for Canadian Children's Lit­erature 38 (1985): 87-89.
  • Review essay on Glen Cavaliero's Charles Williams, Poet of Theology (Macmillan, 1983), in The Powys Review 15 (1984/85): 84-86.