Selected academic publications (articles & book chapters) by Rick de Villiers. Selected academic publications Atomic Allusion: Hamlet , Oppenheimer, and Cormac McCarthy's Last Novels Notes and Queries (2025) True Feints: Samuel Beckett and the Sincerity of Loneliness Journal of Modern Literature 47.3 (2024) Poetic Licentiousness and the Destitutions of High Culture Critical Quarterly (2024) Alternative Avatars of the Plagiarist, or, An Embarrassment of Glitches Textual Practice (2023) You Equals Not-I : avowal, disavowal, and second-person narration in Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction (2023) Transgeneric assessment: modernist affordances for the student essay Critical Arts (2023) Criteria of Embarrassment: J.M. Coetzee’s ‘Jesus trilogy’ and the legacy of modernist difficulty English Studies in Africa 65.1, 2022 Mr Eliot’s Christmas Morning Service: Participation, Good Will, and Humility in Murder in the Cathedral Literature and Theology 34.2, 2020 A Defense of Wretchedness: Molloy and Humiliation Journal of Modern Literature 42.4, 2019 “What can you do with a Story Like This[?]”: The Expectations and Explicitations of South African Fiction Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 31.2, 2019 Banishing the Backward Devils: Eliot's Quatrain Poems and “Gerontion” In The New Cambridge Companion to T. S. Eliot , 2017 For a full list of academic publications, click here .

Contact For any queries about my writing or teaching, please get in touch. Potential M.A. or PhD candidates are also welcome to contact me. Supervision areas include (but aren't limited to): modernism, South African literature, affect theory, literature and theology, philosophy and literature. First Name Last Name Email Message Thanks for submitting! Send

Description of Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation, by Rick de Villiers. First book-length comparative study of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett. Develops a literary theory of humility and humiliation. Explores the relation between negative affect, ethics and aesthetics Rich, learned, and sophisticated... Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism proves to be one of the most exciting and rewarding books on modernism I have read in a long time. JEAN-MICHEL RABATÉ, University of Pennsylvania "What a mighty monograph on modernist humility this is! Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism is a rare work of interpretative innovation and textual close reading." MATTHEW FELDMAN, University of York "De Villiers's study is deeply impressive. It is highly original and erudite, yet engaging and, yes, humble." MIKE MARAIS, Rhodes University Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation (EUP) Humility and humiliation have an awkward, often unacknowledged intimacy. Humility may be a queenly, cardinal or monkish virtue, while humiliation points to an affective state at the extreme end of shame. Yet a shared etymology links the words to lowliness and, further down, to the earth. Like the terms in question, T. S. Eliot and Samuel Beckett share an imperfect likeness. Between them is a common interest in states of abjection, shame and suffering – and possible responses to such states. Tracing the relation between negative affect, ethics, and aesthetics, Eliot and Beckett’s Low Modernism demonstrates how these two major modernists recuperate the affinity between humility and humiliation – concepts whose definitions have largely been determined by philosophy and theology. Read more HERE . Reviews, awards, interviews Journal of Modern Literature T.S. Eliot Studies Annual ASSAF Book Awards Journal of Literary Studies The Modernist Review New Books Network interview

Latest essay: Robert Frost, Amanda Gorman, and American inaugural poetry. Reviews: Steven Connor / Giving Way; Paul Beatty / The Sellout / Leon de Kock / Losing the Plot. Reviews & essays ChatGPTlön, or Prompts towards a Supreme Fiction In Media Res , 2023 The case of the acclaimed South African novel that ‘borrows’ from Samuel Beckett The Conversation (Africa), 2022 Review: Giving Way: Thoughts on Unappreciated Dispositions , by Steven Connor Philosophy and Literature , 2022 Samuel Beckett’s blushing body of work Shame and Medicine blog, Sept 2021 The Poem Not Taken: Robert Frost and the inaugural tradition that isn’t Wild Court , 1 April 2021 Review: Samuel Beckett’s How It Is: Philosophy in Translation , by Anthony Cordingley Journal of Beckett Studies 29.1, 2020 Beckett's humility/humiliation nexus Indiana University Press Blog, 2019 Review: The Wartime Diary of WD Terry: A ‘Safrican’ at Cambridge, with selected letters 1938-1941 , by Laurence Wright English Academy Review 35.2, 2018 Review: Natures of Africa: Ecocriticism and Animal Studies in Contemporary Cultural Forms , by Fiona Moola (ed.) English Academy Review 35.2, 2018 Review: Losing the Plot: Crime, Reality and Fiction in Postapartheid Writing, by Leon de Kock English Academy Review 35.1, 2018 Review: The Sellout , by Paul Beatty The Scores , 2016 Poetry 'Except Names' Stanzas Poetry Magazine (forthcoming 2021) 'To Tarshish' New Contrast 169, 2015 'Alcyone Unheard' & 'Valediction' Sol Plaatjie European Union Poetry Anthology vol 3, 2013 'Ablatus' & 'Babel' New Contrast 153, 2011 Media UFS career podcast UFS career podcast Artist Name 00:00 / 16:59 Interview with Ivan Vladislavić

Rick de Villiers teaches English literature at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His first book, Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation is out in October. rickdevilliers.com Rick de Villiers teaches English literature at the University of the Free State, South Africa. His first book, Eliot and Beckett's Low Modernism: Humility and Humiliation (2021) is published by Edinburgh University Press.