Dr Jamie McGregor

Lecturer

BA (Hons) (Rhodes), MA (UCT), PhD (Rhodes)

email address: j.mcgregor@ru.ac.za

 

Rodney Trudgeon talking to Dr Jamie McGregor of Rhodes University about a lecture he delivered at the UCT Summer School: the lecture was entitled “A Composer’s Midlife Crisis: Wagner before and after Schopenhauer”. It is generally thought that Wagner was never the same again after encountering the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer midway through his greatest work, The RING. Dr McGregor discusses these and many other aspects of Wagner and his music including illustrations from Wagner’s operas. Click here for the radio interview. 

Teaching and Research Interests

Myth, romance and fantasy (especially JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis); Arthurian literature (from Malory to TH White); Romanticism; Modernism (especially Joyce). 

Jamie McGregor has a particular interest in Wagnerian music-drama and its literary/cultural influences and analogues. 

See The Wagner Society Events 2021 for details of Dr McGregor's research activities for 2021. 

 

                   

 

Selected Publications

Book Chapters

2018:  “The Ring, The Waves and the Wake: Eternal Recurrence in Wagner, Woolf and Joyce.” Essays on Music and Language in Modernist Literature (ed. Katherine O’Callaghan). New York: Routledge Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 2018: 48–61.

Journal Articles

2013:  “Tolkien’s Devices: The Heraldry of Middle-earth.” Mythlore. 32.1/2: 93–109.

2011:  “Two Rings to Rule them All: A Comparative study of Tolkien and Wagner.” Mythlore. 29.3/4: 133–53.

2006:  “‘The Sea, Music and Death’: The Shadow of Wagner in Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway.” English Studies in Africa. 49.2: 83–108.  

Conference Proceedings

2021 (forthcoming):  “Knife, Sting, and Tooth: The Lasting Effects of Frodo’s Wounds”.  Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2019 (ed. Will Sherwood).

2016:  “Tolkien’s Devices: The Heraldry of Middle-earth.” Proceedings of the Tolkien Society Conference 2012 (ed. Lynn Forest-Hill). Edinburgh: Luna Press, 2016: Vol.2.17–24.

 

Academic Portfolios

English 2 Course Coordinator

English 1 and Honours Paper Coordinator

Examinations Editor and Coordinator

 

Public Engagements

2021 (upcoming):  “Wagner and Literature”, four online lectures for the Wagner Society UK (see attached for details).

2020:  Radio interview with FMR’s Rodney Trudgeon on People of Note, broadcast 19 January 2020: https://iono.fm/e/803083

“A Composer’s Mid-life Crisis: Wagner Before and After Schopenhauer”, UCT Summer School, 11 January 2020:

http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/wagner-and-schopenhauer

“Stairway to Heaven: A Guide to Dante’s Purgatory”, UCT Summer School, 6–10 January 2020:

http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/dante%E2%80%99s-purgatorio

2019:  “Going Through Hell: The Self-help Secrets of Dante’s Inferno”, UCT Summer School, 21–25 January 2019: http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/dante%27s_inferno

2017:  “Modern British Fantasy, 1916–77”, UCT Summer School, 16–20 January 2017: http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/Modern_British_Fantasy

2016:  “Tolkien’s Truth: The Surprising Reality of Fantasy”, UCT Summer School, 23 January 2016: http://www.summerschool.uct.ac.za/tolkiens_truth

 

 

Last Modified: Fri, 26 Feb 2021 15:47:09 SAST