I am an Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto, working at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (with a primary focus on England), with research interests as well in women writers (especially Margaret Cavendish), textual editing, and history of the book. I am working on two monograph projects. The first is entitled Early Modern Literary Physics, on the early modern natural philosophical concept of physiologia in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially as that idea gets reworked and reinvented in literary texts. The second, entitled Choose Your Own Poems and Fancies, is a rearrangeable digital edition and study of Margaret Cavendish’s atom poems (Part I of her poetic collection), which were radically shuffled between the first and second editions. I specialize particularly in Cavendish’s natural philosophy and poetry, though I also have publications on natural philosophy in the poetry of C17 English writers Lucy Hutchinson and Hester Pulter. I am a Co-Director of Digital Cavendish (http://digitalcavendish.org/), and one of three General Editors of The Complete Works of Margaret Cavendish, under contract with Punctum Books (http://digitalcavendish.org/complete-works/).

Personal Website: http://www.english.utoronto.ca/facultystaff/facultyprofiles/blakel.htm

Contact: blake@utoronto.ca