About Author

Robert Lumsden has lectured in literature for several decades at the National University of Singapore and the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. from University of Sussex, and a Ph.D. from University of East Anglia. Dr. Lumsden has published articles and chapters in books on critical theory, poetry, modernism and practical criticism, has co-edited, with Rajeev Patke, a collection of essays on the relation between critical theory and society titled Institutions in Cultures: Theory and Practice. He has also published poetry and short fiction, and has recently completed a novel. His research interests include the tensions and connections existing between comedy, satire, and humour, and an account of various attempts to contain a sense of the numinous in literary language.