Riley McGuire

My research interests are in the philosophy of poetry; in particular, I am interested in "poetic knowledge," or the kind of knowledge to which poetry enjoys unique or privileged access. My approach to this question is influenced especially by the philosophy of poetry of Jacques Maritain and the philosophy of language and poetry of Martin Heidegger. The sample of texts in relation to which I pursue this question spans from Old English through Romantic poetry; some prominent texts and authors would be the Old English Elegies, Chaucer, and Keats's Odes and other texts in which his poetics of "negative capability" is evident.

Other intellectual passions of mine would be comparative philology, ancient and mediaeval languages, stigmeology and grammar, Victorian literature, and aesthetics and ethics. Key writers who have shaped me, apart from Maritain and Heidegger, would be Aristotle, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aquinas, Walter Pater, and Josef Pieper.

I am also an amateur novelist, having self-published a neo-Victorian novel, Edward Williams: A Modern Parable.

Publications

“Romans 15:4 and the Canterbury Tales: A Modest Proposal Concerning Chaucer’s Entente.” Chaucer Review 57, no. 2 (April 2022): 232–50.

“The Place of Allegory in Tolkien’s Understanding of the Old English Exodus.” Tolkien Studies 19 (2022): 39–46.