Haley, David B. 1936-

PERSONAL: Born 1936. Education: Harvard University, A.B., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES: Home— MN. Office— Department of English, University of Minnesota, 310C Lind Hall, 207 Church St. S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, from assistant professor to professor of English, currently professor emeritus.

WRITINGS

Shakespeare’s Courtly Mirror: Reflexivity and Prudence in “All’s Well That Ends Well,” University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 1993.

Dryden and the Problem of Freedom: The Republican Aftermath, 1649-1680, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1997.

(Editor, with others) “A Certain Text”: Close Readings and Textual Studies in Shakespeare and Others in Honor of Tom Clayton, University of Delaware Press (Newark, DE), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: David B. Haley is a professor of English and author of a number of volumes, including Shakespeare’s Courtly Mirror: Reflexivity and Prudence in “All’s Well That Ends Well.” It is a study of a complex play that is similar to Shakespeare’s earlier history plays in that it mirrors the heroism of princes and courtiers. “Haley considers the play a dialectic between courtly prudence and Divine Providence,” remarked C.B. Hardman in the Review of English Studies. In the play, Count Bertram is forced by the king to marry a low-born beauty named Helena after she cures the king of a fistula. “Throughout the play from the recovery of the sick king, Haley suggests that a continued analogy with the alchemical process is maintained,” observed Hardman, who concluded: “When Haley discusses the roles of Bertram and Helena, the persona of the courtier, courtly society, and courtly praxis, he is sometimes interesting, even when one does not accept his conclusions.”

Haley is also the author of Dryden and the Problem of Freedom: The Republican Aftermath, 1649-1680, in which he “assembles symptomatic and contextualized readings of Dryden’s poems chronologically,” remarked Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean in Studiesin English Literature, 1500-1900.“Haley’s book will be read with great interest by those devoted to Dryden’s poetic accomplishments.”

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES

PERIODICALS

Review of English Studies, November, 1995, C.B. Hardman, review of Shakespeare’s Courtly Mirror: Reflexivity and Prudence in “All’s Well That Ends Well,” p. 567.

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, summer, 1998, Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, review of Dryden and the Problem of Freedom: The Republican Aftermath, 1649-1680, p. 553.*