Professor Robert H F Carver

Professor Carver's main teaching and research interests lie in Renaissance literature, Renaissance Humanism, the influence of classical texts and ideas on Western culture, and the origins and development of the novel - from ancient prose fiction to contemporary Australian writing.

Carver was born and raised in Adelaide. Graduating from ANU with a University Medal in English and Latin, he won a Commonwealth Scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was awarded his doctorate (DPhil) in 1992. Following stints as Junior Research Fellow (and College Lecturer) at Trinity College, Oxford, and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, he taught at Oriel College, Oxford, before moving to the University of Durham in 1997. At Durham, he served as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature in the Department of English Studies, taking on the role of Deputy Head of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities between 2007 and 2010.

His publications include an Oxford Classical Monograph, The Protean Ass: The Metamorphoses of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance (OUP, 2007), translations from the Latin writings of the twelfth-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and numerous scholarly articles on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance literature.

Current projects include a critical edition of William Adlington's translation of The Golden Asse of Lucius Apuleius (1566), and an extended study of the relationship between ancient prose fiction and the so-called 'Rise of the Novel'. In the field of creative writing, Professor Carver has published poems and short stories in Australia, the UK, and the US. He won the under-26 section of the Mattara Bicentennial Poetry Prize (1988) and was a finalist in the Newcastle Poetry Prize (2018). His poem 'Convocation' was Highly Commended in the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition (2020).

I. Single Authored Books

The Protean Ass: The 'Metamorphoses' of Apuleius from Antiquity to the Renaissance, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). (236, 000 words / 545pp). https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-protean-ass-9780199217861?q=Protean%20Ass&lang=en&cc=au

II. Jointly Authored Books

Hildegard of Bingen: An Anthology, edited and introduced by Fiona Bowie and Oliver Davies with New Translations by Robert Carver (London: SPCK, 1990 fourth impression, 1996).  Published in the USA as Hildegard of Bingen: Mystical Writings (New York: Crossroads, 1990). (Contributed 87 pages of translations from the Latin) https://www.amazon.com/Hildegard-Bingen-Anthology/dp/0281044619

III. Edited Books

Resilience: Poems from the 2021 ACU Prize for Poetry, ed. by Robert H. F. Carver and Margot Hillel (Sydney: Australian Catholic University, 2021). ISBN 978-1-922325-07-5.

Public Works V: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose, ed. Robert Carver (Canberra: Dashwood Road Press, 1985) (ISBN 0 9589469 0 6).

Editorial Board, Federal Law Review (Australia), 1984.

IV. Articles in Refereed Journals or Publications: Sole Authorship

Carver, Robert H. F., 'Apuleius (Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis)', in The Chaucer Encyclopedia, 4 vols, editor-in-chief, Richard Newhauser (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022 forthcoming).

Carver, Robert H. F., 'The Medieval Ass: Re-evaluating the Reception of Apuleius in the High Middle Ages', in The Afterlife of Apuleius, ed. by Florence Bistagne, Carole Boidin, and Raphael Mouren, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies Supplements (London: University of London Press, Institute of Classical Studies, 2021), 1-26. Open Access: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv20hcv88

Carver, Robert H. F., 'The Platonic Ass: Thomas Taylor's Cupid and Psyche in Context (1795-1822)', in Cupid and Psyche: The Reception of Apuleius' Love Story since 1600, ed. Regine May and Stephen Harrison, Trends in Classics: Pathways of Reception 1 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2020), pp. 119-46. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110641585/html?lang=en

Carver, Robert H. F., 'Knowing Heliodorus: The Reception of the Aethiopica in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England', in Re-Wiring the Ancient Novel, Volume 1: Greek Novels, ed. Edmund Cueva, Stephen Harrison, Hugh Mason, William Owens, and Saundra Schwartz (Groningen: Barkhuis & Groningen University Library, 2018), pp. 221-62. https://www.barkhuis.nl/product_info.php?products_id=235 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvggx289

Carver, Robert H. F., 'Bologna as Hypata: Annotation, Transformation, and Transl(oc)ation in the Circles of Filippo Beroaldo and Francesco Colonna', in Cultural Crossroads in the Ancient Novel, ed. Marília P. Futre Pinheiro, David Konstan, and Bruce Duncan MacQueen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), pp. 221-38. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781501503986/html?lang=en

Carver, Robert H. F., 'English Fiction and the Ancient Novel', in The Oxford History of the Novel in English, Volume One: Prose Fiction in English from the Origins of Print to 1750, ed. Thomas Keymer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 123-45. https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780199580033.001.0001/oso-9780199580033