Louis Cameron, Darwin

Biographical Information

I read English as an undergraduate at Merton College, Oxford, where I received a first and the Gibbs Prize for distinguished performance in my Finals examinations. I completed my MPhil at Cambridge under a Clare Hall Boak Studentship, ranking second in my cohort.

My current doctoral studies are funded by the Vice-Chancellor’s & Darwin College Dr Pamela Raspe Studentship.

I welcome enquiries to supervise the English Literature 1500–1700 and Practical Criticism papers, as well as dissertations related to my research interests. 

 

Research Interests

My doctoral research explores the ethical and epistemological significance of irony in English culture and thought c. 1640–1690, and especially in the work of John Milton. I consider Milton's poetry and prose alongside works of theology and moral, political, and natural philosophy by writers including Desiderius Erasmus, Joseph Hall, Thomas Hobbes, Lucy Hutchinson, Robert Boyle, John Locke, and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Later writers and philosophers of interest include Friedrich Schlegel, Søren Kierkegaard, Richard Rorty, and Jonathan Lear. 

My broader research interests include early modern biblical interpretation and biblical poetics, especially the reception of the Book of Job; rhetoric; early modern environmental ethics; the early history of the Royal Society; seventeenth-century scepticism, Stoicism, and Epicureanism; and relationships between natural philosophy, moral philosophy, theology, and style.

Additional interests include the philosophy and fiction of Iris Murdoch. 

Selected Publications

Articles and Book Chapters

‘Styles of Church Government: John Milton, Joseph Hall, and the Politics of Early Modern Irony’, Studies in Philology 125, no. 1 (forthcoming)

‘Hutchinson among the Philosophers: Lucretius, Job, and the Theology of Early Modern Science’, in Early Modern Women’s Scientific Literatures (Brill, forthcoming)

‘Contingency, Irony, and Sociability: Robert Boyle’s Experimental Style’, The Seventeenth Century 40, no. 3 (2025): 485–510, https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2025.2477781.

Reviews

Review of The Outlandish Book or the Travelling Naturalist: Robert Boyle’s Conversations with Voyagers to Exotic Regions, by Robert Boyle, edited and introduced by Michael Hunter, The Seventeenth Century 41, no. 4 (2026), https://doi.org/10.1080/0268117X.2026.2709283 

Conference Papers

‘“Proverbed for a Fool”: Wisdom and Authority in Samson Agonistes’. Proverbs and Popular Wisdom in Early Modern Literature and Culture, University of Hull (Hull, UK, July 2026)

‘“Tending to wild”: The Environmental Ethics of Paradise Lost’. Poetry’s Environments, University of Leeds (Leeds, UK, June 2026)

‘Laughing Matters: Lucy Hutchinson, De Rerum Natura, and the Satirical Poetics of Early Modern Natural Philosophy’. Women’s Scientific Literatures: The Poetry and Poetics of Early Modern Natural Philosophy, Anglia Ruskin University (Cambridge, UK, June 2025)