Dr Josie O'Donoghue
BA MA PHD
Director of Studies in English, College Assistant Professor, Tutor and Education Coordinator
I am a Fellow, Director of Studies and College Assistant Professor in English at Homerton. I am also an Undergraduate Tutor, and have a role as an Education Co-ordinator for the College. I read English at Christ's College from 2004-2007, and returned to Christ's for my doctoral studies after completing a Master’s in Linguistics at University College, London. I was a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College from 2017-2021, and a College Teaching Associate at Downing from 2021-2022.
I am interested in connections between linguistics and literary criticism, with a particular emphasis on cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. My doctoral research explored ways in which relevance theory (a theory of communication influential in the field of pragmatics) can influence the interpretation of metaphor in the work of Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson and Seamus Heaney. My first book, The Relevance of Metaphor: Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021, and I am currently working on a project on metaphor and translation in contemporary Irish poetry.
I teach the Shakespeare, Renaissance and Practical Criticism papers at Part I, and Practical Criticism, Tragedy, Lyric and Contemporary Writing at Part II. I supervise dissertations in these areas and on topics related to my research interests.
The Relevance of Metaphor: Communication in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
'The Politics of Metaphor in Heaney's Sweeney Astray', Irish University Review, 47:3 (2017), 450-469
'"A Breather Before We Must Go On?" A Review of Seamus Heaney and the Adequacy of Poetry, by John Dennison', Cambridge Quarterly, 45:3 (2016), 281-291
'Rhythmic Rightness: A Review of Seamus Heaney: New Selected Poems 1988-2013', Cambridge Humanities Review, 9 (2015)
'"A Fling of Freedom": A Review of Metaphor, by Denis Donoghue', Cambridge Quarterly, 44:1 (2015), 69-77
'Is a Metaphor (Like) a Simile? Differences in Meaning, Effects and Processing', UCL Working Papers in Linguistics, 21 (2009), 125-149
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