Mr Ellis Fox

(he/him)

Publication

• Date
• Type

Research

My research interests include psychoanalysis (specifically Freud and Lacan); obsession (OCD, obsessional neurosis); anarchism; postcolonialism; (late) modernism; postmodernism; environmental humanities; and New Sincerity. 

Thesis

The Elements of Obsession: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Hierarchy

My (working) thesis title is The Elements of Obsession: Literature, Psychoanalysis, Hierarchy. It aims to explore what I consider to be the defining features of "clinical" obsession and how they may be explored, reformulated, and understood in the context of 20th-21st Century European and American Literature. These features include rumination, intrusions (intrusive thoughts, urges, feelings) and compulsion. 

My main critical frameworks are psychoanalysis (specifically Freudian and Lacanian), postcolonialism, and anarchism.

These categories and symptoms enable the exploration of various kinds of internal experiences as they apply to literature, whether it be the ruminative style of Beckett's Molloy, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée, or the compulsive behaviour and addictions which define David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. 

My thesis is primarilly focused on the following authors: 

Samuel Beckett

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha

David Foster Wallace

Toni Morrison

Cormac McCarthy

Biography

I recieved my BA in Music and English Literature from Cardiff University in 2022.

I then pursued an MA in Literary Studis (Modern and Contemporary Literature) at Goldsmiths College, London, which I recieved in 2025, and where I was supervised by Dr Richard Crownshaw, on a thesis exploring ecociticism German Idealism in the works of Herman Melville and Cormac McCarthy. 

Supervisors

Aidan Tynan