Prof Victor Houliston
Position
Research Professor
Department
English
Address
Faculty of Humanities
Department of English
IB28
UFS
Telephone
Office
1
Information

Short CV

After an idyllic childhood as a missionary kid in Borneo and Malaysia, I studied English Literature at the University of Cape Town (MA, 1982) and Magdalen College, Oxford (DPhil, 1986), with David Norbrook and Katherine Duncan-Jones. I taught at Stowe for two years and at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for much longer. My research interest in the early English Jesuits began with editing and translating a Latin play from the Jesuit seminary for schoolboys at St-Omer, and my subsequent work on Robert Persons, SJ, took me to the Institute of Jesuit Sources in St Louis and to Campion Hall, Oxford. I am currently the lead editor of the correspondence of Robert Persons (two volumes published, 2017 and 2024, with a third in preparation) and am also engaged in translating his Latin works. Contact details: HoulistonVH@ufs.ac.za; +44 7895 885740

Publications

Recent Books

2024 [with Marianne Dircksen.] De Persecutione Anglicana, by Robert Persons S.J. (1581/2). Critical edition, translation and commentary. London: Bloomsbury.

2024 [with Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Thomas M. McCoog, SJ, Javier Burrieza Sanchez and Ginevra Crosignani]. The Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, SJ: Vol. 2:1588–1597. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

2017 [with Ginevra Crosignani and Thomas M. McCoog, SJ]. The Correspondence and Unpublished Papers of Robert Persons, SJ: Vol. 1:1574–1588. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.  

Recent articles and book chapters

2022 ‘Recusant Literary Culture in England and Wales.’ In A Companion to Catholicism and Recusancy in Britain and Ireland: From Reformation to Emancipation. Ed. Robert E. Scully, with Angela Ellis. Brill`s Companions to the Christian Tradition 101. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 507–34.

2021 ‘Paul’s Cross and the State Church: The Case of John Donne and the Jesuits.’ In Old St Paul’s and Culture. Ed. Shanyn Altman and Jonathan Buckner. Early Modern Literature in History. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Pp. 147–72.

2020 [with Aislinn Muller] ‘The Elizabethan Martyrs.’ In The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Christian Martyrdom. Ed. Paul Middleton. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Pp. 322–37.

2020 ‘Rehabilitating Robert Persons: Then and Now.’ In Reformation Reputations. Ed. David Crankshaw and George Gross. London: Palgrave. Pp. 421–47.

Selected earlier publications

2007 Catholic Resistance in Elizabethan England: Robert Persons’s Jesuit Polemic, 1580–1610. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Aldershot / Rome: Ashgate / Jesuit Historical Institute.

1998 The First Booke of the Christian Exercise, appertayning to Resolution, by Robert Persons (1582).  A critical edition, with introduction and commentary.  Studies in the History of Christian Thought.  Leiden: E.J. Brill.

1988 The Silkewormes and their Flies, by Thomas Moffet (1599).  A critical edition, with introduction, commentary and glossary.  Renaissance English Text Society.  Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies.

***

2016 ‘Persons’ Displeasure: Collaboration and Design in Leicester’s Commonwealth.’ In Publishing Subversive Texts in Elizabethan England and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.Ed. Teresa Bela, Clarinda Calma and Jolanta Rzegocka.Leiden: Brill, 2016.Pp. 155–66.

2016 [with Thomas M. McCoog, SJ]  ‘Life in Tudor Limerick: William Good’s “Annual Letter” of 1566.’  Archivium Hibernicum: Irish Historical Records 69: 7–36.

2013 ‘The Violence of the Knowledge of God: John Donne and the Ordinance of Preaching.’ Religion and Literature 45.1: 33–54.

2013 [with Sonia Fanucchi] ‘Conversations among the Living and the Dead: Counterpoint in Action in the English Curriculum.’ English Academy Review 30.1: 92–106.

2009 ‘The Merchant of Venice in the City of Gold: The Tercentenary in Johannesburg.’ The Shakespearean International Yearbook: 9. Special Section: South African Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century, ed. Graham Bradshaw, Tom Bishop and Laurence Wright (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 46–65.

2009 ‘Medieval Studies and the Voice of Conscience in Twentieth-Century South Africa.’ In Medievalisms in the Postcolonial World: The Idea of ‘the Middle Ages’ Outside Europe. Ed. Kathleen Davis and Nadia Altschul. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.  Pp. 348–68.

2006 ‘An Apologia for John Donne’s Pseudo-Martyr.Review of English Studies 57: 474–86.

1996 ‘Why Robert Persons would not be Pacified: Edmund Bunny’s Theft of The Book of Resolution.’  In The Reckoned Expense, ed. Thomas McCoog, S.J.  Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press. Pp. 159–78. 

1993 ‘Breuis dialogismus: An anonymous Becket play from the Jesuit Seminary at St Omer.’ English Literary Renaissance 23: 382–427.

1993 ‘St Thomas Becket in the Propaganda of the English Counter-Reformation.’ Renaissance Studies 7: 44–70.

1989 ‘Sleepers Awake: Thomas Moffet’s Challenge to the College of Physicians of London, 1584.’ Medical History 33: 235–46.



Research


Area(s) of Interest

Early modern British and Irish Catholic studies (religion and politics)

John Donne (especially the prose works and sermons)

Renaissance rhetoric

Neo-Latin

Book history



FACULTY CONTACT

T: +27 51 401 2240 or humanities@ufs.ac.za

Postgraduate:
Marizanne Cloete: +27 51 401 2592

Undergraduate:
Neliswa Emeni-Tientcheu: +27 51 401 2536
Phyllis Masilo: +27 51 401 9683

Humanities photo next to contact block

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful, to better understand how they are used and to tailor advertising. You can read more and make your cookie choices here. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept