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Dr Sarah Carter
BA (University of Sheffield); MA (University of Sheffield); PhD (University of Sheffield)
Teaching Fellow in Early Modern Literature
Contact Details:
- T: +44 (0)116 252 5262
Research Interests
Sarah Carter’s research and teaching interests are in early modern literature. Her most recent research involves the exploration of the reception of Ovid in the period and gender theory, which has resulted in several articles and a recently published monograph, Ovidian Myth and Sexual Deviance in Early Modern English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). This book analyses the cultural presence of particular myths involving ideologically deviant sexual behaviour, including sexual violence, homosexuality, hermaphroditism and incest, and explores how classical mythology facilitated an engagement with and reproduction of such behaviours in the literature of the period.
Previous work has included a research fellowship with the Royal Shakespeare Company on their Complete Works festival, which involved collating and editing the critical histories of twenty-nine Shakespearean plays, and related educational / reference work on Shakespeare in introductory essays on Romeo and Juliet and Measure for Measure for a Companion to Shakespeare, plus entries for an online dictionary of Shakespeare’s classical references (http://www.shakmyth.org/), all of which are to be published this year.
Dr Carter has secondary interests in witchcraft and folklore, both in the early modern period and beyond, and revenge tragedy, particularly regarding the gendered roles and violence therein. As a result of her earlier research on the intertextual use of classical mythology, she is currently working on the application of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of intertextuality to early modern literature’s use of classical narratives.
Postgraduate Supervision
Dr Carter has previously supervised MA dissertations on classical influences in early modern literature and visual art, specifically regarding the work of Edmund Spenser and the legend of Lucrece.
Teaching and Administration
Teaching
- EN1010: Reading English
- EN1050: Renaissance Drama
- EN2020: Renaissance Literature
- EN3010: Dissertation
Recent Publications
Ovidian Myth and Sexual Deviance in Early Modern English Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011)
‘“Not [...] perfect boy nor perfect wench”: Ovid’s Hermaphroditus and the Early Modern Hermaphrodite’, The Survival of Myth: Innovation, Singularity and Alterity ed. David Kennedy and Paul Hardwick (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010)
‘Titus Andronicus and Myths of Maternal Revenge’, Cahiers Élisabéthains 77 (Spring, 2010)
‘From the ridiculous to the sublime: Ovidian and Neoplatonic registers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Early Modern Literary Studies 12.1 (May 2006)
