Joe Ronsley

Joe Ronsley, a native of Chicago, received his BA, MA, and PhD from Northwestern University. He wrote his PhD dissertation under the supervision of the renowned Yeats and Joyce scholar Richard Ellmann.

Following his graduate work, he spent his entire teaching career, aside from two years at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and summer seminars at UBC, at McGill University, from which he retired in 1994.

His publications include Yeats’s Autobiography: Life as Symbolic Pattern; several edited books, including Denis Johnston’s Broadcast Plays, Vol. 3 of the Collected Plays, essays on Denis Johnston and on Myth and Reality in Irish Literature, Selected Plays of Denis Johnston, and essays in tribute to Richard Ellmann; as well as numerous articles on early 20th-century British, Irish, and American literature.

He is co-general editor of a series, now numbering 14 volumes, entitled Irish Drama Selections. He has lectured widely in Europe, Japan, Singapore, and India, as well as in North America. He has also participated in a bilateral Canada-Japan cultural exchange, where he conducted seminars and lectured at Waseda University (Tokyo), and participated in a conference on Yeats in Kyoto.

Ronsley has participated in various committees devoted to Irish literature in Europe and Singapore. He is also a founding member and past president of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies, and a former vice-president of the International Association for Study of Anglo-Irish literature.

Previously taught: