Patrick Murphy
Education
- Ph.D. English Literature, University of Wisconsin (2007)
- M.A. English Literature, University of Wisconsin (2001)
- B.A. English, Denison University (2000)
Teaching and Research Interests
- Old and Middle English Language and Literature
- Medieval Studies
- Medievalism
- Ghost Stories
- Comics
Selected Publications
Books
- Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James. Penn State University Press, 2017.
- Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. Penn State University Press, 2011.
Articles
- “‘Madam, Will You Talk?’: Disability, Confinement, and a Newly Discovered Draft of a Ghost Story by M.R. James.” English Studies (18 September 2025), 1-16. With Fred Porcheddu.
- “The Riddles of The Hobbit, the Academic History of the Exeter Book, and the Invention of Tolkien’s Ring” Tolkien Studies 21 (2024): 31-66.
- "Old English Enigmatic Poems and their Reception in Early Scholarship and Supernatural Fiction." Humanities 11 (2022), 81-101.
- "Viking English in Contact with Comics" in Transmedia Vikings, a special issue of In Media Res (2021).
- "Teaching the History of the English Language with Comics," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART), 28.1 (Spring 2021), 101-121.
- "Eumenides and 'Newmenides': Academic Furies in Edwardian Cambridge." Brill's Companion to the Reception of Aeschylus. Leiden: Brill, 2017. With Fred Porcheddu.
- "Robert Thornton, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Cambridge University Library MS. Dd.11.45." Modern Philology 114.1 (2016). With Fred Porcheddu.
- "Lay of a Last Survivor: Beowulf, Great War Memorials, and M.R. James's 'A Warning to the Curious." Review of English Studies 66 (2015), 205-22. With Fred Porcheddu.
- "Amateur Error, Templar Terror, and M.R. James's Haunted Whistle." Philological Quarterly 92. (2013): 389-415. With Fred Porcheddu.
- "The Manuscript of M.R. James's 'The Ash-Tree.'" Notes & Queries 61.4 (2014): 583-5. With Fred Porcheddu and Stephen Hopkins.
- “Renovation and Resurrection in M.R. James’s ‘Episode of Cathedral History.’” Studies in Medievalism 22 (2013): 85-113. With Fred Porcheddu.
- “The Antiquarian Diaries of Thomas Hearne and Mr. Poynter in the Fiction of M.R. James: Duty Unfulfilled.” English Literature in Transition 55 (2012): 339-60. With Fred Porcheddu.
- “Leo ond beo: Exeter Book Riddle 17 as Samson’s Lion.” English Studies 88.4 (2007): 371-87.
- “The Riders of the Celestial Wain in Exeter Book Riddle 22.” Notes and Queries 251.4 (2006): 401-07.
- “Bocstafas: A Literal Reading of Exeter Book Riddle 57.” Philological Quarterly 84.2 (2005): 139-60.
Work in Progress
- 黑料社区 to the History of the English Language (In progress: a graphic [comics] history of the English language, which I am both writing and illustrating)
- The Exeter Book and the Medievalist Imagination (in progress)