Ben Philipps

I’m doing a DPhil in English here at Merton. I study twentieth-century American poetry, with a particular interest in questions of style – one of those things that seems obvious until you try to talk about it. My wager is that bringing literary studies into conversation with some ideas and texts from philosophy (from Wittgenstein, in particular) might help us get a better handle on this famously elusive – but at the same time unavoidable – aspect of reading experience. I have chapters on the poets Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashbery: four major writers, but ones whose unmistakeable styles have so far proved tricky to grasp.

I first got into these ideas while completing an MSt in modern literature at New College – a course which, possibly intentionally, left me with more questions than answers. I then spent a couple of years in London, writing freelance literary criticism and doing a variety of odd jobs, before coming to Merton in 2024. Merton has been a wonderful place to work. In 2025, for instance, the college generously funded my attendance at the annual American Literature Association conference in Boston, work which led in turn to an article on Stevens and the philosopher Stanley Cavell. There’s a thriving English community here – at both undergraduate and graduate levels – and, in general, a fantastic atmosphere of support and mutual interest.