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Donald Stump, Ph.D.

Professor
Department of English

Education

Ph.D. Cornell University English, 1978
M.A. Cornell University English, 1974
B.A. Grinnell College English, 1969

Research Interests

Renaissance literature and its classical and biblical backgrounds; Elizabeth I and the writers of her court; the Bible and literature; fantasy.

Publications and Media Placements

Books

Spenser’s Heavenly Elizabeth: Providential History in “The Faerie Queene.” Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, Springer International, 2019, 337 pp.

Elizabeth I and the ‘Sovereign Arts': Essays in Literature, History, and Culture. Edited by Donald Stump, Linda Shenk, and Carole Levin. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 407. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011, 363 pp.

Elizabeth I and Her Age: A Norton Critical Edition. Co-Editor: Susan M. Felch. New York: W.W. Norton, 2009. 898 pp.

Sir Philip Sidney: An Annotated Bibliography of Texts and Criticism (1554-1984). New York: G.K. Hall/Macmillan, 1994. Co-authors: Jerome S. Dees and C. Stuart Hunter.

Editor-in-Chief, 'Hamartia': The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition. Essays in Honor of John M. Crossett. Edited by Donald Stump, J.A. Arieti, Lloyd Gerson, and Eleonore Stump. Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 16. New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983.

Special Journal Issue

Images of Elizabeth I: A Quadricentennial Celebration. Edited by Donald Stump and Carole Levin. Explorations in Renaissance Culture 30 (Summer 2004): 158 pp.

Articles

“Elizabeth and Her Favorites: Britomart, Florimell, and Oram’s Concept of Fragmented Historical Persons.” Spenser Studies 34 (2020): 177-84.

“Spenser’s Dragon Fight and the English Queen: The Struggle over the Elizabethan Settlement.” Queens Matter in Early Modern Studies, edited by Anna Riehl Bertolet. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, pp. 141-56.

“Mapping the Revisions to Arcadia: Geo-political Decision-Making in Sidney and Virgil.” Sidney Journal 30.2 (2012): 1-31. Recipient of the Gerald R. Rubio Award, International Sidney Society.

"Reforming the Greek Tragic Hero: Cross-Dressing in Sidney's Old Arcadia." In Teaching Early Modern Prose, edited by Margaret W. Ferguson and Susan Monta. Options for Teaching Series. New York: Modern Language Association. 2010, pp. 177-87.

"Learning from Women: Sidney's Critique of Humanist Education." In Challenging Humanism, edited by Ton Hoenselaars and Arthur F. Kinney. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press. 2005, pp. 154-78.

"Abandoning the Old Testament: Shifting Paradigms for Elizabeth, 1578-82." In Images of Elizabeth I: A Quadricentennial Celebration. Edited by Donald Stump and Carole Levin. Explorations in Renaissance Culture 30 (Summer 2004):89-109

"Fashioning Gender: Cross-Dressing in Spenser's Legend of Britomart and Artegall." Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual 15 (2001): 95-119.

"Marlowe's Travesty of Virgil: Dido and Elizabethan Dreams of Empire." Comparative Drama 34 (Spring 2000): 79-107.

Articles on "Prayer" and "Trinity." In A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, ed. David Lyle Jeffrey. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, l992, pp. 626-31, 785-88. Co-author for "Trinity": David L. Jeffrey.

"Edmund Spenser." In The Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, vol. 1: Writers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Detroit: Bruccoli, Clark, Layman, Gale Research, 1992, pp. 359-87. Reprinted in a revised and enlarged version in Sixteenth-Century British Nondramatic Writers, 3rd Series, ed. David A. Richardson. Detroit, Washington, D.C., and London: Gale Research, l996, pp. 228-63.

"The Two Deaths of Mary Stuart: Historical Allegory in Spenser's Book of Justice." Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual 9 (1991): 81-105.

"Pride" and "Tragedy." In The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton, Donald Cheny, W. F. Blissett, David Richardson, and William W. Barker. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, pp. 556-57, 697.

"A Slow Return to Eden: Spenser on Women's Rule." English Literary Renaissance 29 (Fall 1999): 401-21.

"The Sidney Database and Sir Philip Sidney: A Reference Guide." Sidney Newsletter 10 (1989): 75-79.

"Sidney's Astrophil, Vanishing." Renaissance Papers (1988), pp. 1-13.

"Hamlet, Cain and Abel, and the Pattern of Divine Providence." Renaissance Papers (1985), pp. 27-38.

"Spenser's Inferno: The Order of the Seven Deadly Sins at the Palace of Pride." Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984): 203-18. Co-author: John M. Crossett.

"Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy: Four Indirect Routes from Athens to London." In 'Hamartia': The Concept of Error in the Western Tradition. Essays in Honor of James M. Crossett. Texts and Studies in Religion, vol. 16. New York and Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, l983, pp. 211-46.

"Isis Versus Mercilla: The Allegorical Shrines in Spenser's Legend of Justice." Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual 3 (1982): 87-98.

"Sidney's Concept of Tragedy in the Apology and in the Arcadia." Studies in Philology 79 (1982): 41-61.