Darren Dyck, PhD

I’m a Shakespearean by training but a generalist by inclination. That’s another way of saying I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking and writing about Shakespeare—thinking and writing which recently culminated in this book—but also that I find it hard to keep myself from reading and thinking about a lot of other things, among these, the visionary poetry of medieval auctores Dante and Chaucer, the fantastic (and often bizarre) writings of Inklings C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield, and the ‘conversion’ narratives of both early Church theologians like Augustine of Hippo and twentieth-century novelists like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and Walker Percy.

I’m supposed to include something here about my “major scholarly achievements,” and while my monograph is noted both above and below, I hope it’s true that my greatest scholarly feats are achieved in the classroom rather than on the page. The reason I read, think, and write is not to ‘mobilize knowledge,’ as the saying goes, but to provide for my students real opportunities to be transformed the writers and texts of the past. I am convinced that the careful reading and appreciation of literature is essential not just for those who want to write themselves, but for anyone who desires to live a fully human life. I strive in my teaching to lead students to reverence truth, desire goodness, and rejoice in beauty—which is, of course, what all the best books prompt us to do.