Dr. Peter Boxall

Biography

Peter Boxall is Goldsmiths' Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. He is particularly interested in the political role of literary imagination and how it helps to create new realities. His books include an analysis of Samuel Beckett and Don DeLillo and he has developed a theory that accounts for the political function of literary imagination in the wake of modernism. His works have widened the scope of inquiry to broadly address the politics of literary fiction. His book 'Twenty-First-Century Fiction' (2013) offered an early analysis of the formal features of novels from the current century. 'The Value of the Novel' (2015) discusses the role of the novel in the production of modernity from the eighteenth century to the present. In 'Prosthetic Imagination' (2020), he examines the relationship between mimesis and prosthesis and unfolds the novel form from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to the present. His forthcoming book 'Possibility Literature' (2024) explores a constellatory theory of literary possibility, featuring essays focused on significant authors such as Melville, Dickinson, Woolf, Beckett, Zadie Smith, and J. M. Coetzee. He has supervised over thirty doctoral students with a variety of topics and has taught extensively in both modern and contemporary literature, addressing broader historical contexts and theories. Boxall has held positions at NYU in London, and participated in academic exchanges at Lille University and Sorbonne, while also contributing as Editor-in-Chief of 'Textual Practice'.

Research Interests