Staff profile

Academic biography

I studied English and cultural history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, completing my PhD in 2012. A revised version of my thesis was published in 2013 as Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne. Following this I taught at the University of Sydney, University of Notre Dame, Sydney, and at Macquarie University, before taking up the S. Ernest Sprott Fellowship in 2014, awarded by the University of Melbourne and carried out at the Warburg Institute, University of London, and then fellowships at Durham University. I have also been an Associate Investigator with the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100-1800 (http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/).

I am interested in early modern and eighteenth century cultural and intellectual history. My research and publications have focused on topics such as rhetoric, the history of emotions, soliloquy, and more recently humour and friendship.

• Myth and mythography
• Traditions of comedy
• Humour theory
• Early modern rhetoric
• Shakespeare
• Early modern drama
• Francis Bacon and natural philosophy
• Poetry of John Donne

Authored book

• Derrin, D. (in press). Humour and Renaissance Culture: 1500-1660. Routledge
• Derrin, D. (2013). Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Book review

• Derrin, D. (in press). Review of "Humour and Laughter in History: Transcultural Perspectives" edited by Elisabeth Cheauré and Regine Nohejl. HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 31(4),
• Derrin, D. (2020). Review of "In the Event of Laughter: Psychoanalysis, Literature and Comedy" by Alfie Bown. Modern Language Review, 115(1), 147-148
• Derrin, D. (2014). Review of "The English Clown Tradition from the Middle Ages to Shakespeare" by Robert Hornback. Parergon, 31(2), 173-174

Chapter in book

• Derrin, D. (2021). Comic Character and Counter-Violation: Critiquing Benign Violation Theory. In D. Derrin, & H. Burrows (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology (133-150). Palgrave Macmillan
• Derrin, D. (2020). Painting Deformed Portraits: Humour in Pope's Early Prose. In A. Cousins, & D. Derrin (Eds.), Alexander Pope in the Reign of Queen Anne: Reconsiderations of his Early Career (153-174). Routledge
• Derrin, D. (2018). Contemplative Idiots in Soliloquy: Rhetorical Parody, Laughable Deformities and the Audience. In A. Cousins, & D. Derrin (Eds.), Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama (68-79). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316779118.006
• Derrin, D. (2014). Subtle Persuasions: The Memory of Bodily Experience as a Rhetorical Device in Francis Bacon’s Parliamentary Speeches. In D. Kambaskovic (Ed.), Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment (133-154). Springer Verlag
• Derrin, D. (2014). Shakespearean Comedy. In S. Attardo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (684-688). SAGE Publications

Edited book

• Cousins, A., & Derrin, D. (Eds.). (in press). Pope’s Mythologies: Alexander Pope and Myth in the Early British Enlightenment. Routledge
• Derrin, D., & Burrows, H. (Eds.). (2021). The Palgrave Handbook of Humour, History, and Methodology. Palgrave Macmillan
• Cousins, A., & Derrin, D. (Eds.). (2020). Alexander Pope in the Reign of Queen Anne: Reconsiderations of his Early Career. Routlege
• Cousins, A., & Derrin, D. (Eds.). (2018). Shakespeare and the Soliloquy in Early Modern English Drama. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316779118

Journal Article

• Derrin, D. (2018). Self-referring Deformities: Humour in Early Modern Sermon Literature. Literature and Theology, 32(3), 255-269. https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frw039
• Derrin, D. (2018). Sine Dolore: Relative Painlessness in Shakespeare’s Laughter at War. Critical Survey, 30(1), 81-97. https://doi.org/10.3167/cs.2018.300106
• Derrin, D. (2017). Crackinge Thraso: the Braggart Soldier Image in Sixteenth-Century Sermons and Religious Polemic. English Studies, 98(7), 704-716. https://doi.org/10.1080/0013838x.2017.1339991
• Derrin, D. (2016). Rethinking Iago’s Jests in Othello II.i: Honestas, Imports and Laughable Deformity. Renaissance Studies, https://doi.org/10.1111/rest.12219
• Derrin, D. (2015). Rhetoric and the Commonplace in the Courtroom Defence Scene of Shakespeare's Othello. Use of English, 66(3),
• Derrin, D. (2014). The Humorous Unseemly: Value, Contradiction and Consistency in the Comic Politics of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Shakespeare, 11(4), 425-445
• Derrin, D. (2012). Engaging the Passions in John Donne’s Sermons. English Studies, 93(4), 452-468
• Derrin, D. (2011). Mens Businesse and Bosomes’: Bacon’s Thetical Rhetoric in ‘Of Truth’ and ‘Of Anger’. Parergon, 28(1), 43-63