Alexander Freer

Lecturer in Romanticism

Contact details

Address

Street

School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures
50 George Square
Edinburgh

City
Post code
EH8 9JU

Availability

  • Office Hours 2025-26
    Semester 1: Room 2.51, 50 George Square, 12pm-1pm
    If you are unable to attend at this time please email.

Biography

Background

I studied at the universities of Warwick (BA English and Comparative Literature) and Cambridge (MPhil, PhD in English). Before coming to Edinburgh in 2023, I held a research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, and taught at Cambridge and the University of East Anglia.

I work on Romantic period poetry and prose, and on wider questions of literary theory and history from 18thC to the present. My most recent work has focused on the Romantic lyric (Shelley, Landon, Kirke White, Wordsworth); on ethical form; and on the history and critical value of ideas including elation and gentleness.

At Edinburgh I teach a variety of courses including 'Enlightenment and Romanticism', 'Reading Theory', and 'Desire and Writing'.

Undergraduate teaching

  • Romantic literature
  • Literary criticism and theory
  • Poetry and poetics

Postgraduate teaching

  • Romantic literature
  • Literary criticism and theory

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

Please feel free to contact me regarding supervision on any topics listed under my research interests. I particularly welcome theoretically-informed projects on Romantic literature, and critical projects engaging problems of ethics, phenomenology, affect, or aesthetics.

Research summary

  • British Romantic writing
  • Poetry and poetic form, 18th century to present
  • Literary criticism and theory, 18th century to present
  • Economics and literature

Current research interests

Romantic period poetry and prose (William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Letitia Landon, Lord Byron, William Godwin, Thomas De Quincey, Henry Kirke White, John Keats); Literary and social theory (G.W.F. Hegel, Georg Simmel, Georg Lukacs, Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Niklas Luhmann, Theodor Adorno, Sigmund Freud, Jean Laplanche, Leo Bersani, Anne Dufourmantelle, Fredric Jameson); contemporary debates around lyric, form, and reading (eg. Caroline Levine, Heather Love, Sharon Marcus, Virginia Jackson, Rita Felski); Economics and literature (Debt, Forgiveness, Risk, Discounting).

Past research interests

My first book, Wordsworth's Unremembered Pleasure (OUP, 2020) argues that 'unremembered pleasure', an idea Wordsworth formulates in 'Tintern Abbey' but is often overlooked by modern readers, is central to understanding his writing. Wordsworth's poems discover and articulate a broad range of previously unfelt, unnoticed, and unconscious satisfactions.

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