Texas Tech University

Ryan Hackenbracht

I specialize in Renaissance literature with a particular focus on poetry, poetics, and the history of literary traditions. Early modern Japan—specifically Basho and the invention of hokku—occupies much of my thought currently. The Edo period shares fascinating similarities with Renaissance England, not the least of which is a literary culture invested in the interplay of aesthetics and metaphysics. Additionally, I am interested in reception and adaptation—how rewriting the plays of Shakespeare today, for instance, allows Asian American writers to think through issues of race and generational trauma, or how Milton's Paradise Lost helped Charles Darwin and T. H. Huxley fine-tune the early tenets of evolutionary theory.

My first book, National Reckonings: The Last Judgment and Literature in Milton's England (Cornell University Press 2019), shows how during the English Revolution, widespread expectation of the apocalypse put pressure on the girdled confines of nationalistic thinking, as Britons began preparing themselves for Christ's prophesied return. I've published broadly on a number of Renaissance authors, including Milton, Hobbes, Marvell, Surrey, and Erasmus, and my articles have appeared in journals such as Erasmus Studies, Milton Studies, SEL, Philological Quarterly, and Renaissance and Reformation, among others.  

Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University

Areas of Specialization and Interest
Renaissance, Book History, Religion and Literature

Book

National Reckonings: The Last Judgment and Literature in Milton's England (Cornell University Press, 2019)

Articles

Pacis Encomium: Virgil's Georgics, Humanist Allegory, and the Pacifism of Erasmus, More, and Vives.” Erasmus Studies 42.1 (2022): 5-29. 

“Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, and Commercial Fishing Propaganda during the Anglo-Dutch Wars.” Studies in English Literature 59.3 (2019): 485-506.

"Galactic Milton: Angelic Robots and the Fall into Barbarism in Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series." Milton Studies 57 (2016): 293-321.

"Milton and the Parable of the Talents: Nationalism and the Prelacy Controversy in Revolutionary England." Philological Quarterly 94.1-2 (2015): 71-93.

"Mourning the Living: Surrey's 'Wyatt Resteth Here,' Henrician Funerary Debates, and the Passing of National Virtue." Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme 35.2 (2012): 61-82.

"The Plague of 1625-26, Apocalyptic Anticipation, and Milton's Elegy III." Studies in Philology 108.3 (2011): 403-38.

Book Chapters

"Milton on the Move: Walking and Self-Knowledge in Paradise Lost." In Milton, Materialism, and Embodiment: "One First Matter All." Ed. by Kevin J. Donovan and Thomas Festa. Duquesne UP, 2017. 59-80.

"Hobbes's Hebraism and the Last Judgment in Leviathan." In Identities in Early Modern English Writing: Religion, Gender, Nation. Ed. by Lorna Fitzsimmons. Brepols, 2014. 85-115.

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Associate Professor of English
Renaissance Literature

Email: ryan.hackenbracht@ttu.edu
Office: 428