Charles LaPorte (he/him/his)

I specialize in poetry and in a big messy sub-field called “religion and literature.”  With Lori Peterson Branch, I edit the series Cambridge Elements in Literature and Religion, 1500-Present for Cambridge University Press. I have a longstanding interest in the relationship between literary genre (e.g.. poetry, the novel, the essay, etc.) and cultural value.  My first book, Victorian Poets and the Changing Bible, concerns the complicated relationship between Victorian poetry and contemporaneous Biblical interpretation.  My second book, The Victorian Cult of Shakespeare, explores religious responses to Shakespeare during the nineteenth century.  Generally speaking, my scholarship looks at why, when, and how some genres become valued over others, and to what effect.