Royle, Nicholas 1957-

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Royle, Nicholas 1957-

PERSONAL:

Born October 4, 1957, in London, England; son of Maxwell and Kathleen Royle; married Kati Heikkonen, December 29, 1993. Education: Oxford University, M.A., D.Phil.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Sussex, Arts Building B274, Falmer, Brighton, BN1 9QN England E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland, teacher of literature, 1987-92; University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, teacher of theories of literature, 1992-99; University of Sussex, professor of English, 1999—. Subeditor, Reader's Digest (England) and Time Out (England).

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind, Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1991.

(Editor) Afterwords, Outside Books (Tampere, Finland), 1992.

After Derrida, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Andrew Bennett) An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory: Key Critical Concepts, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1995, 3rd edition, Pearson Longman (New York, NY), 2005.

(With Andrew Bennett) Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, Macmillan (London, England), 1995.

E.M. Forster, Northcote House in association with the British Council (Plymouth, England), 1999.

(Editor) Deconstructions: A User's Guide, Macmillan (Basingstoke, UK), 2000.

The Uncanny: An Introduction, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

Jacques Derrida, Routledge (New York, NY), 2003.

How to Read Shakespeare, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2005.

OTHER

Editor, Oxford Literary Review. Contributor to periodicals, including Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times (England), and Time Out.

SIDELIGHTS:

English professor Nicholas Royle's work centers on the critical theory of deconstruction—the idea that careful reading of texts can reveal underlying attitudes, thoughts, and assumptions—and the man most responsible for creating this school of criticism, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. In After Derrida, Royle examines the problem of composition outside of deconstruction. "The book is full of astute apercus," Thomas Docherty stated in the Modern Language Review, "many of which are woven into a more or less intriguing and seductive web of speculations concerning the nature of reading ‘after’ (lag of, in the manner of, aspiring to) Derrida." After Derrida, said Review of English Studies contributor J. Nash, "trace[s] an instructive and entertaining pathway through Derridean thought, emerging in a brilliant final chapter that links Derrida to his ‘great unsaid,’ Beckett. Individual chapters may seem not to run a continuous thread, in that they take in new historicism, psychoanalysis, and institutions of pedagogy, but they do cohere in the continual effort to rework theoretical pieties in experimental fashion."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Cambridge Quarterly, September, 2004, "Reading the Uncanny," p. 277.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 1995, R.J. Thompson, review of Elizabeth Bowen and the Dissolution of the Novel, p. 1591; February, 2001, W.B. Warde, review of Deconstructions: A User's Guide, p. 1068.

MLN, December, 2003, "Derrida in and out of Context: On the Necessity to Know ‘Why Derrida?’" p. 1298.

Modern Fiction Studies, summer, 1997, Stephen Barker, review of After Derrida.

Modern Language Review, April, 1997, Thomas Docherty, review of After Derrida, p. 419.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2001, review of Deconstructions, p. 205; November, 2004, review of An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and Theory: Key Critical Concepts, p. 221.

Review of English Studies, November, 1997, J. Nash, review of After Derrida, p. 576.

Theoria, April, 2006, Kevin A. Morrison, review of The Uncanny: An Introduction, p. 138.

Times Higher Education Supplement, October 13, 1995, Roy Harris, review of After Derrida, p. 22.