Tobias Gregory
Associate Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies
Office: Marist 334
Office Phone: 202 319 5488
Email Address: gregoryt@cua.edu
Education: B.A., Virginia, 1993; Ph.D., Michigan, 1999
Research interests
Early modern literature; epic; Milton
Research
Tobias Gregory writes mainly about the literature and culture of early modern England, with a strong secondary interest in Italian literature. His book From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic (Chicago, 2006) offers the first comparative study of Renaissance approaches to the problem of epic divine action: how should a Christian epic replace the Olympian gods of Homer and Virgil? Drawing on scholarship in several disciplines--religious studies, classics, history, and philosophy, as well as literature--the book sheds new light on two subjects of enduring importance in Renaissance studies: the precarious balance between classical literary models and Christian religious norms, and the role of religion in drawing lines between allies and others.
Professor Gregory is currently writing a book on Milton, which has led him from the genre-based approach of From Many Gods to One to a broader interest in the varieties of early modern English religious experience, including seventeenth-century tolerationist thought, popular homiletics, and responses to the problem of evil. His articles and review essays have appeared in ELH, Renaissance Quarterly, SEL, Milton Studies, Huntington Library Quarterly, and the London Review of Books. Awards include an ACLS fellowship and the Isabel MacCaffrey Prize of the International Spenser Society.
Selected publications
- From Many Gods to One: Divine Action in Renaissance Epic. University of Chicago Press, 2006.
- "The Political Messages of Samson Agonistes." SEL 50 (2010) 175-203.
- "Hero as Hero." London Review of Books 30.5 (6 March 2008).
- "Tasso's God: Divine Action in Gerusalemme liberata." Renaissance Quarterly 55 (2002) 559-595.
Teaching
Professor Gregory supervises graduate student research in most areas of early modern literary studies. His recent graduate courses include Milton, Renaissance epic, and Literature and religion in early modern England. At the undergraduate level, his teaching interests include Shakespeare, Milton, the history of English literature, and epic poetry from Homer to the present. He is an associated faculty member in CUA's University Honors Program. Professor Gregory also enjoys discussing Shakespeare with audiences outside the university, and to that end has collaborated with the Smithsonian and with the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington, DC.
Selected syllabi
- Literature and Religion in Early Modern England (graduate)
- Renaissance epic (graduate)
- Shakespeare's political drama (undergraduate)
Administration
Professor Gregory directs the graduate program in English at CUA. For more information about the graduate program, see here.
