Jonathan Allison | University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences

Jonathan Allison

Professor of English

Director, Division of LIterature and Film

Contact Information

jalliso@uky.edu

1249 Patterson Office Tower

(859) 257-6961

Education

BA, PGCE (Queen's University, Belfast)
MA, PhD (University of Michigan)

Research Interests

Nineteenth-Century British Literature and Culture
Twentieth and Twenty-First Century British Literature and Culture

Affiliations

English
Social Theory
W.B. Yeats International Summer School
University Press of Kentucky
University of Kentucky Libraries National Advisory Board
IASH University of Edinburgh

Availability

Office hours: T, R, 2.00-3.30

Research

Areas of Specialty:

Twentieth-Century British and Irish Literature
Modernism
Poetry
Irish and Scottish Studies
Textual Studies

Jonathan Allison's annotated edition of Letters of Louis MacNeice (Faber and Faber, 2010) was named a 'Book of the Year' by the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited several essay collections, including Yeats's Political Identities (University of Michigan Press, 1996), Poetry and Contemporary Culture, with Andrew Roberts (Edinburgh University Press, 2002) and Bound for the 1890s (Rivendale Press, 2007). His essays have appeared in scholarly journals such as Colby Quarterly, Critical Survey, Sewanee Review, South Atlantic Review, Yearbook of English Studies, Yeats: An Annual of Critical and Textual Studies. He was editor of the series Irish Literature, History and Culture published by University Press of Kentucky. He previously taught at University College London and the University of Michigan and has worked as an editorial assistant with the London Review of Books. He has been Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. A former Director of the W. B. Yeats International Summer School, Sligo, he contributed to the documentary film The Passions of William Butler Yeats, Lucasfilm.

Selected Publications

Selected Publications:

Books

(Editor) Letters of Louis MacNeice. London: Faber and Faber, 2010. xlvii + 768pp. ( Times Literary Supplement 'Book of the Year,' 2010)
(Editor) Bound for the 1890s: Essays on Writing and Publishing in Honor of James G. Nelson. Foreword by G. Thomas Tanselle. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2006. 204pp.
(Co-editor with Andrew Roberts) Poetry and Contemporary Culture: the Question of Value. Edinburgh University Press and Columbia University Press, 2002. 250pp.
(Editor) Poetry for Young People: William Butler Yeats. Illustrations by Glenn Harrington. New York: Sterling, 2002.
(Editor) Yeats's Political Identities. University of Michigan Press, 1996. 352pp.
Patrick Kavanagh: A Reference Guide. Foreword by Maurice Harmon. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996. 220pp.

Selected articles and chapters

"Heaney and Politics." Seamus Heaney in Context, ed. Geraldine Higgins. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
"Louis MacNeice and His Archives." The Contemporary Poetry Archive, eds. Linda Anderson, Mark Byers, Ahren Warner. Edinburgh University Press, 2019, 80-91.
"Preface." Patchwork: A Bobbie Ann Mason Reader. University Press of Kentucky, 2018.
"Strange Meeting: Ghosts in Modern Poetry." From the Supernatural to the Uncanny, eds. Stephen M. Hart, Zoltan Biedermann. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017, 120-33
“Memory and Starlight in Late MacNeice.” Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry, eds. Fran Brearton and Alan Gillis. Oxford University Press, 2012, 394-407
“Pure Form and Impure Poetry.” Incorrigibly Plural: Louis MacNeice and his Legacy, eds. Edna Longley and Fran Brearton. Carcanet Press, 2012, 42-54
"Galway, Coole and Ballylee." W.B. Yeats in Context, eds. David Holdeman and Ben Levitas, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 98-108
"'Playing around with quotations and stuff:' Ciaran Carson's Snow." Carson et Cetera: A Festschrift for Ciaran Carson, eds. Ian Sansom, Richard Irvine. Belfast: QUB, 2008, 109-13
"W. B.Yeats and Politics.” Cambridge Companion to W.B.Yeats, eds. John Kelly and Marjorie Howes. Cambridge University Press, 2006, 185-205
"War, Passive Suffering and the Poet." Sewanee Review CXIV (spring) 2006: 207-19.
"The Reception of W.B.Yeats in Ireland since 1950." Reception of Yeats in Europe. Ed. K.P.S.Jochum. London, New York: Continuum Press, 2006, 231-54.
"Magical Nationalism, Lyric Poetry and the Marvellous.” A Companion to Magical Realism. Eds. Stephen M. Hart, Wen-chin Ouyang. London: Tamesis (Boydell & Brewer), 2005, 228-36.
"'Friendship's Garland:' the Manuscripts of Seamus Heaney's 'Fosterage.'" Yearbook of English Studies. London: MHRA, 2005, 58-71.
"Patrick Kavanagh and Anti-Pastoral." Cambridge Companion to Contemporary Irish Poetry, ed. Matthew Campbell. Cambridge University Press, 2003, 42-58.
"Contemporary Poetry and the Great War." Poetry and Contemporary Culture. Eds. J. Allison & A. Roberts. Edinburgh University Press, 2002, 209-26.
"Seamus Heaney and the Romantic Image." Sewanee Review CVI (spring) 1998: 184-201.

Selected courses taught

Seminar on W.B.Yeats (740)
Poetry and Modernism, 1900-1945 (740)
Contemporary British Poetry and Culture Since 1950 (642)
Modernism and Ireland (642)
Bibliography and Textual Studies (600)
Honors Seminar: Seamus Heaney (495)
Yeats and Joyce (481G)
British Writers of the Thirties (481G)
Modern British Poetry (481G)
Scottish Literature (481G)
Irish Literature (481G)
British Fiction Since 1950 (481G)
The Swinging Sixties (440G)
Modernism (349)
Elegy and Love Poetry (345)
Ulysses in Context (330)
Nineteen Eighty-Four in Context (330)
Survey of English Literature II (242)
The Thistle and Shamrock: Scotland, Ireland and America (230)
Mythology and Folklore (230)