Wim Tigges is a guest at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society.

More information about Wim Tigges

Fields of interest

• Popular culture, from the early Middle Ages to the present day
• English-language prose fiction, in particular pre-1960
• Nonsense literature

Research

My research focuses on the aesthetics of the works of ‘marginal’ authors and of popular culture, in particular of literary nonsense, as well as action-series and -films featuring female heroes. Most of my published work, in both English and Dutch, is of a popularising rather than innovative nature, including various literary translations. Of late, my research has mostly concentrated on various aesthetic as well as ideological aspects of the TV fantasy-action series  Xena: Warrior Princess.

Teaching activities

Before early retirement I taught Old and Middle English as well as 18th- and 19th-century British literature in both the BA and MA programmes. From 1998 to the present day I have also been teaching introductory language courses on Old and Modern (Gaelic) Irish. 
Since 2005, I have taught a yearly MA course in the Modern Literature (English track) programme, on subjects ranging from period-oriented courses (e.g. 18th-century, late Victorian, and Interbellum prose fiction) to courses on individual authors (e.g. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, James Joyce, and Samuel Beckett). Similar subjects have been and are currently being offered (in Dutch) in the Leiden HOVO (Academic Courses for Seniors) programme.

Curriculum Vitae

Wim Tigges (1947) graduated  cum laude in English Language and Literature at the University of Leiden in 1974. In the latter year he was appointed as a junior lecturer in the Leiden English Department, teaching Old and Middle English, and, from 1986 onwards, also British literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. From 1979 until 1999 he worked in the same department as a part-time teacher in the aforementioned subjects. 
During this period, he also published literary translations from the works of Edward Lear (1978), Sir Thomas Malory (1981), Samuel Johnson (1983), Alexander Pope (1993) and Alfred Lord Tennyson (1999). In 1985 he obtained a Master’s (equivalent) degree in Political Science at the University of Amsterdam, and in 1988 he obtained his PhD at Leiden University, on the dissertation  An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense. 
From 1999 until early retirement in 2004, he worked as a lecturer in the Leiden English Department. Since then, he has been a guest lecturer, currently for the Literary Studies section of the Humanities Faculty (English track).

Key publications

• W. Tigges,  “Her Courage Will Change the World”: An Appraisal of Xena: Warrior Princess.  www.lulu.com (print-on-demand), 2007.
• Tigges, W. en F. Ó Béarra,  An Old Irish Primer. Nijmegen: De Keltische Draak, 2006.
• W. Tigges, ed.,  Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany, Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999.
• W. Tigges,  An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988.