Department of English

Alexander Brock’s research examines the problem of sensory delusion in the medieval and early modern periods, focusing on areas including comedy and the theater, global medieval storytelling and the novella, ancient psychology, linear perspective, theories and representations of the Annunciation and the Eucharist, and receptions of various sorts: of classical antiquity, of South Asian storytelling traditions, and of European comedy and prose narratives across vernacular literatures (Italian, English, French, Spanish, German). Dr. Brock’s research turns to the problem of sensory delusion to explore how medieval and early modern writers were able to understand perceptions as verbally constructed and our outer and inner worlds as mediated by language. His research has appeared and is forthcoming in Heliotropia, The Ben Jonson Journal, postmedieval, and Forum for Modern Language Studies. His current book project explores the reception of Aristotelian psychology in Boccaccio’s Decameron. 

At Appalachian State, Alexander Brock teaches courses in world literature and Renaissance literature and is involved in the Medieval Studies minor. In addition to survey courses in world literature from antiquity to 1700 and in world mythologies, Dr. Brock has taught upper-level and graduate seminars on premodern gaslighting, Renaissance perspective, and a world literary history of identity theft. 

 Education:

• Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Princeton University
• M.A., Littérature française de la Renaissance aux Lumières, École normale supérieure, Paris IV La Sorbonne, and Paris III La Sorbonne nouvelle
• Diplôme of the École normale supérieure, Littératures et langage
• B.A., Comparative Literature, Princeton University, summa cum laude 

Publications: 

“An Economy of Trickery: ‘The Sharper and the Simpleton’s Wager’ in Renaissance England,” Forum for Modern Language Studies, special issue on Renaissance comedy (2027), forthcoming.

“Angels and Rogues: Boccaccio’s Decameron IX.3 and Its Biblical and South Asian Intertexts,” postmedieval 16 (2025): 849-876, https://doi.org/10.1057/s41280-025-00400-2

“But Did You See the Handkerchief? Celia and the Problem of Inattentional Blindness in Ben Jonson’s Volpone,” Ben Jonson Journal 32.1 (2025): 1-24, https://doi.org/10.3366/bjj.2025.0386 

“When Il Grasso Becomes Calandrino: La Novella del Grasso Legnaiuolo and the Productive Failure of Literary Imitation,” Heliotropia 20 (2023): 19-39, https://www.heliotropia.org/20/brock.pdf

Reviews:

Review of Marco Santagata, Boccaccio: A Biography, trans. Emlyn Eisenach (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2025), Sixteenth Century Journal 57.1 (2026): 200-203