Barnaby Ralph

My main interests are early modern literature, rhetoric, and aesthetics in England. My primary focus is on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, particularly in London. Because I am so interested in different aspects of the culture of the time, such as painting, music, sculpture, architecture, as well as all forms of literature, this means that I have investigated not just each area, but connective elements. Two of these – rhetoric and authenticity – have proven particularly fruitful in my research. Rhetoric is effective as a metalanguage, connecting different genres, and the theory of authenticity serves as a lens for understanding works in the context of their day, as well as their subsequent reception and transformation. This has driven much of my published output, such as my discussion of Thomas Shadwell, entitled “‘Therein Intermix'd’: Psyche and the London Restoration Stage,” which appears in London and Literature 1603-1901 (2017), and my discussion of aesthetic theory in “Translating Sublimity: Early Modern Interpretations of the Perì Hýpsous” in the book 意味をすくいあげて 通訳者と翻訳者の終わりなき挑戦 (2022). I also have a secondary interest in musicology in the broader sense, and was a co-author of the 2021 book Music in the Making of Modern Japan.