Trevor Cook

I specialize in Renaissance English literature and literary history. My current research project, The Boundaries of Ownership: Proprietary Authorship Before Copyright, examines the emergence of the plagiarism accusation in English; it asks what authors understood themselves to own before literary property was first vested in them by the Statute of Anne, 1710.   

I also publish on John Milton, literary theory, popular literature, and the role of memory in crime fiction, and maintain an active interest in Canadian literature. My reviews of contemporary poetry have appeared in The Antigonish Review, The Malahat Review, The Dalhousie Review, and The Fiddlehead.

My primary teaching responsibilities at CUE include Shakespeare and the literature of the English Renaissance, as well as introductory courses in literature and composition. I am open to supervising an Independent Study (ENG 480) in detective stories, police procedurals, or crime fiction.

Education

• PhD, English, 2011, University of Toronto
• MA, English Language and Literature, 2004, Queen’s University
• BA (Hons), English, 2003, Crandall University
• Associate Student, 2002, Regent’s Park College, Oxford University

Select Publications

Cook, Trevor. “Milton’s Chivalric Tragedy: The Persistence of Romance in Paradise Lost 9.” Milton Studies, vol. 62, no. 1, 2020, pp. 136-58. 

– – –. “Sherlock Holmes and the Will to Forget.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, vol. 57, no. 4, 2017, pp. 841-63.

– – –. “‘Well, Heck’: Confounding Grace in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.” Christianity and Literature, vol. 66, no. 4, 2017, pp. 656-74.

– – –. “Collaboration and Proprietary Authorship: Shakespeare et al.” Shakespeare Survey, vol. 67, edited by Peter Holland, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 44-59.

– – –. “The KJV Plagiarized: Joseph Smith’s Mormon Scriptures.” The King James Version across Borders and Centuries, edited by Angelica Duran, Duquesne UP, 2014, pp. 239-58.

– – –. “The Scourge of Plagiary: Perversions of Imitation in the English Renaissance.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 1, 2014, pp. 39-63.

– – –. “The Covering Cherub: Harold Bloom and Northrop Frye, 1959-69.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, 2013, pp.10-33.

– – –. “‘The meate was mine’: Donne’s Satyre II and the Prehistory of Proprietary Authorship.” Studies in Philology, vol. 109 no. 1, 2012, pp. 103-31.