Gary Taylor (English literature scholar)

Gary Taylor (born 1953) is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University, author of numerous books and articles, and editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and [http://thomasmiddleton.org Oxford Middleton] .

Life

The first member of his family to graduate from high school, Taylor won scholarships that led to bachelor’s degrees in English and Classics from the University of Kansas (1979) and to a doctorate in English from the University of Cambridge (1988). With Stanley Wells, he worked for eight years as the “enfant terrible”Fact|date=March 2008 of the Oxford Shakespeare (1978-86), a project that generated much controversy through editorial decisions such as printing two separate texts of "King Lear" and attributing a poem commonly known as "Shall I die?" to Shakespeare (an attribution that has since been almost universally rejected). [Vickers, B. 2006, 'By other hands', "Times Literary Supplement", 11 August, Available at: [http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3122831.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3122831.ece] ] He has taught at Oxford University, Catholic University of America, Brandeis University (where he was Chair of the English department), and the University of Alabama (where he directed the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies, 1995-2005). In 2005, he joined the English Department at Florida State University, where he became founder and first director of the interdisciplinary History of Text Technologies program.

Taylor has written extensively on Shakespeare, Middleton, early modern culture, canon formation, race and ethnicity, gender and masculinity. Four of his works are included in the Random House list of the hundred most important books on Shakespeare (more than any other non-British author). He is best known for his work as an editor, textual critic, and editorial theorist, for which he has received fellowships from the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has also written for Time, The Guardian, and other periodicals, spoken to many theatre audiences, and been often interviewed on radio and television.

Taylor devoted twenty years to [http://thomasmiddleton.org "The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton"] , published by Oxford University Press in 2007. With John Lavagnino, he led a team of 75 contributors from 12 countries to produce “the Middleton First Folio”, designed to establish Middleton’s status as “our other Shakespeare.” Among other works, Taylor and Lavagnino chose to print the entire texts of William Shakespeare's plays "Macbeth" and "Measure for Measure", on the theory that Middleton revised both of these plays after their original composition. They include Shakespeare's "Timon of Athens" as well, but in this case postulating that it was a collaboration between the two authors. Also included in the volume are such anonymous plays as "A Yorkshire Tragedy", "The Second Maiden's Tragedy" (presented under the title "The Lady's Tragedy") and "The Revenger's Tragedy", which are generally, though not universally, credited to Middleton by modern scholars.Fact|date=March 2008

Taylor has four grown children, and is married to the feminist critic [http://english.fsu.edu/faculty/cdaileader.htm Celia R. Daileader] . They divide their time between Tallahassee, Florida, and Lecce, Italy.

elected works

Books:

*" [http://thomasmiddleton.org The Collected Works of Thomas Middleton] ", gen. eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (2007).
*"Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture", gen. eds. Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino (2007).
*John Fletcher, "The Tamer Tamed", ed. Celia R. Daileader and Gary Taylor (2006).
*William Shakespeare, "Complete Works", gen. eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (1986, rev. 2005).
*"Buying Whiteness: Race, Culture, and Identity from Columbus to Hip Hop" (2005).
*"Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood" (2000).
*"Cultural Selection" (1996).
*Gary Taylor and John Jowett, "Shakespeare Reshaped 1606-1623" (1993).
*"Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present" (1989).
*Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor (with John Jowett and William Montgomery), "William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion" (1987).
*Gary Taylor and Michael Warren, eds., "The Division of the Kingdoms" (1983).

Articles and book chapters

*"Making Meaning Marketing Shakespeare 1623," in "From Performance to Print in Early Modern England", ed. Peter Holland and Stephen Orgel, volume 3 of "Redefining British Theatre History" (Palgrave, 2006), 55-72.
*"Shakespeare's Mediterranean "Measure for Measure", in "Shakespeare and the Mediterranean", ed. Tom Clayton et al. (2004), 243-69.
*"Divine [ ] senses," "Shakespeare Survey" 54 (2001), 13-30.
*"Gender, Hunger, Horror: The History and Significance of "The Bloody Banquet"," "Journal of Early Modern Cultural Studies", 1 (2001), 1-45.
*"Hamlet" in Africa 1607," in "Travel Knowledge", ed. Ivo Kamps and Jyotsna Singh (2000), 211-48.
*"Feeling Bodies", in "Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century", ed. Jonathan Bate et al. (1998), 258-79.
*"Forms of Opposition: Shakespeare and Middleton," "English Literary Renaissance", 24 (1994), 283-314.
*"Bardicide," in "Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions", ed. Roger Pringle et al (1994), 333-49.
*"The Renaissance and the End of Editing", in "Palimpsest: Textual Theory and the Humanities", ed. George Bornstein and Ralph G. Williams (1993), 121-50.
*"Revising Shakespeare," "TEXT", 3 (1987), 285-304.
*"The Fortunes of Oldcastle," "Shakespeare Survey", 38 (1985), 85-100.
*"The War in "King Lear"," "Shakespeare Survey", 33 (1980), 27-34.

External links

*Florida State University, Department of English, [http://english.fsu.edu/faculty/gtaylor.htm Faculty Page for Gary Taylor]
* [http://thomasmiddleton.org Oxford Middleton website]
* [http://pathways.fsu.edu/faculty/hott/ History of Text Technologies at Florida State University]
* [http://www.time.com/time/europe/html/060327/viewpoint.html “True Is It That We Have Seen Better Plays”] , "Time Europe", March 27, 2006.
* [http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,1714366,00.html “No Holds Barred”] , "Guardian", February 21, 2006.
* [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1369643,00.html “We have to protect People”] , "Guardian", December 9, 2004.
* [http://arts.guardian.co.uk/europeantheatre/story/0,,1104082,00.html “You vile, hopeless, incompetent Brits”] , "Guardian", December 10, 2003.

Notes