Dr Andrew Wynn Owen

BA, MSt, DPhil
Quondam Fellow since 2022

My doctoral research was on epic, Romanticism, and the philosophy of mind. I argued that the epic mode is generally associated with the presentation of an ontological picture that emphasizes mind as, or as an aspect of, the one fundamental substance. Epic also typically presents normative models of agency, grounded by the ontological picture. With reference to works by Wordsworth (Christianized Spinozism), the Brownings (doubt and pragmatism about metaphysics), and Whitman (pantheism), I showed some intricacies of and exceptions to this way of understanding epic, and offered new interpretations of views on epic presented by theorists such as Hegel, Lukács, and Marcuse.