Profile: Laurence Coupe

I was a lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University (1984 – 2014).

I was subsequently a visiting professor at MMU (2014 – 2017).

I have published six books and innumerable essays, articles and reviews.

 

Writings

BOOKS

Myth  (London: Routledge,  1997; 2nd revised & extended edition, 2009)

The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2000)

Kenneth Burke on Myth (New York: Routledge, 2005)

Marina Warner (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2006)

Beat Sound, Beat Vision: The Beat Spirit and Popular Song (Manchester: MUP, 2007)

Kenneth Burke: From Myth to Ecology (Anderson, CA: Parlor Press, 2013)

More about my Books

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

These are listed in reverse order: most recent first.

‘King Lear and the Green World’, in Lucy Webster (ed.), Studying King Lear (London: EMC Publications, 2018), pp. 170-72.

‘Environment’, in Robert A. Segal & Kocku von Stuckrad (eds), A Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, Volume l (Leiden & Boston: Brill Press, 2015), pp 517-524.

‘Reading and Writing’, in Robert A. Segal & Kocku von Stuckrad (eds), A Vocabulary for the Study of Religion, Volume 3 (Leiden & Boston: Brill Press, 2015), pp 196-202.

‘Introduction to Ecocriticism’, AQA A-Level English Literature Critical Anthology (Cambridge: CUP, 2015), pp 49-52, 54-7

‘Ted Hughes and Myth’, in Ted Hughes: New Casebook, ed. by Terry Gifford (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), pp 13-24

‘Green Theory’, in The Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory (2nd ed.),  ed. by Simon Malpas and Paul Wake (London: Routledge, 2013), pp 154-66

‘“A Quest For Place”: Gary Snyder’s Search For A Living Myth’, in  Refashioning Myth: Poetic Transformations and Metamorphoses, ed. by David McInnis, Eric Parisot & Jessica Wilkinson (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp 139-60

‘Foreword’, in Classical and Contemporary Mythic Identities, ed. by Amina Alyal & Paul Hardwick(Lampeter: Mellen Press, 2010), pp xi-xiii

‘Words and the Word: Burke’s Logology and Eliot’s Mythology’, in The Ways of Creative Mythologies,  ed. by Maria Kuteeva (Telford: Tolkien Society Press, 2000), pp. 39-44

‘Myth’, Annotated Bibliography for English Studies (Lisse, Abington, Exton & Tokyo: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1998 onwards) CD-Rom / Internet document

‘Ecocriticism’, Annotated Bibliography for English Studies (Lisse, Abingdon, Exton & Tokyo: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1998 onwards), CD-Rom / Internet document

‘Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and Modern Hermeneutics’, in Sigmund Freud: Critical Approaches, ed. by Laurie Spurling (London & New York: Routledge, 1989), Vol III, pp. 340-353

‘Tell Me Lies about Vietnam: British Poetry and the American War’, in Tell Me Lies about Vietnam, ed. by Alf Louvre & Jeffrey Walsh (Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1988), pp. 167-180

Essays on Arena, Art & Letters, The Enemy, Our Time and Poetry Quarterly in British Literary Magazines: 20th Century, ed. by Alvin Sullivan (New York & London: Greenwood Press, 1986), pp.28-31, 31-35, pp.161-164, pp.327-331, pp.367-369

‘Jack Lindsay: From the Aphrodite to Arena‘, in Jack Lindsay: The Thirties and Forties, ed. by Robert Mackie (London: University of London Press, 1984), pp. 46-60

 

JOURNAL ARTICLES

These are listed in reverse order: most recent first.

‘Richard and Linda Thompson’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight‘, 25 January 2024: https://www.popmatters.com/richard-linda-thompson-atr-50

‘The Twenty Best Harry Chapin Songs’, PopMatters 17 October 2023: https://www.popmatters.com/harry-chapin-music-symbolic-action

‘Beyond the Incredible String Band: Seven Songs by Mike Heron’, PopMatters 7 September 2023: https://www.popmatters.com/mike-heron-sevson-songs-list

‘Songs of the Earth: Woody Guthrie to Neil Young’, PopMatters 16 January 2023 https://www.popmatters.com/woody-guthrie-neil-young-eco-folk

‘What Was So Incredible About the Incredible String Band?’, PopMatters 3 October 2022 https://www.popmatters.com/the-incredible-incredible-string-band

‘What We Can Learn from Robert Bresson’s Simple Tale about a Donkey: Au Hasard Balthazar’, PopMatters 30 August 2022 https://www.popmatters.com/au-hasard-balthazar-robert-bresson

‘When Popular Music Left Love Songs for Gurus’, PopMatters 25 August 2022 https://www.popmatters.com/popular-music-love-songs-gurus

‘Same Song, Different Readings: Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna”‘, PopMatters 15 June 2022 https://www.popmatters.com/bob-dylan-visions-of-johanna

‘The Case for Country Music and its Poetry of Pain’, PopMatters 18  May 2022 https://www.popmatters.com/country-music-poetry-of-pain

‘Leonard Cohen and Country Music’,  Academia Letters, Article 5297, May 2022. See: https://doi.org/10.20935/AL5297

“Reading Song as Poem: Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne'”, Academia Letters, Article 2333, July 2021. See: https://mmu.academia.edu/LaurenceCoupe

‘The Semiotic Fallacy, Twenty Years On’, Academia Letters, Article 89, December 2020. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL89

‘Edward Thomas and Green Studies’, Dymock Poets & Friends, 14 (2015), pp 36-51

‘The Green World: Nature in English Poetry’, E-Magazine 57 (September 2012), pp 27-31

‘Genesis and the Nature of Myth’, Green Letters 11 (Summer 2009), pp 9-22

‘Story and Vision in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy’, E-Magazine 45 (September 2009), pp 35-38

‘A Route to Revelation: Rereading The Dharma Bums’, Beat Scene, 55 (Spring 2008), pp 40-3

‘Dancing Beneath the Diamond Sky: Reading Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man” in its Visionary Contexts’, E-Magazine 29 (September 2005), pp 58-60

‘Myth Without Mystery: The Project of Robert Segal’, Religious Studies Review 29, 1 (January 2003), pp 3-17

‘Kenneth Burke: Pioneer of Ecocriticism’, Journal of American Studies 35 (2001), pp. 413-431

‘Bate & Leavis: An Ecocritical Connection?’, Green Letters 2 (Autumn 2000), pp. 13-20

‘The Hero’s Journey’, English Review, 10, 3 (February 2000), pp. 14-16

‘Rotten with Perfection: Myth, Modernism and Order’, New Comparison, 27/28 (Spring-Autumn 1999), pp.201-8

‘The Comedy of Terrors: Reading Myth with Marina Warner’, Poetry Nation Review, 25, 1 (July-August 1999), pp. 52-5

‘Waiting for the End: The Poetry of Apocalypse’, The English Review, 9, 1 (September 1998), pp. 6-8

‘Rewriting the Cosmos: The Radical Vision of William Blake’, The English Review, 7, 3 (February 1997), pp. 38-41

‘King Lear: Christian Fairy Tale’, The English Review, 6, 4 (April 1996), pp. 2-6

‘Violence and the Sacred: Murder in the Cathedral‘, The English Review, 6, 2 (November 1995), pp. 28-31

‘Tyndale, Interpretation and Revelation’, Tyndale Society Journal, 1, 2 (June 1995), pp. 29-36

‘What’s Wrong with Willy Loman?’, The English Review, 5, 4 (April 1995), pp. 16-19

‘Presence of the Past in Waiting for Godot‘, The English Review, 5, 1 (September 1994), pp. 19-22

‘Reading for the Myth’, The English Review, 4, 4 (April 1994), pp. 6-9

‘The Comic Vision of T F Powys’, The Powys Review, 4, 2 (Summer 1984), pp. 72-6

‘Edgell Rickword – Modernist or Marxist?’, Stand, 22, 3 (Summer 1981), pp.38-43.

 

Also …

I was the founding editor of Green Letters, the journal of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (UK branch), and I remain on its editorial board.

I was co-editor of the special ‘Eco-Musicology’ issue of Green Letters: Number 15 (Autumn 2011).

For many years I was a regular book reviewer for the Times Higher Education magazine. Other journals to which I’ve contributed reviews include Poetry Nation Review and Religion.

I currently have a ‘Guest Column’ with a selection of newspapers published in the Peak District and surrounding area. See https://laurencecoupe.co.uk/guest-column/

Read some of my Essays and articles.

Read some Responses and reviews.