Dr Cassie Gorman

Prior to joining ARU, Cassie was a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Birmingham and held lectureships in English at Oriel College, Oxford and Trinity College, Cambridge. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2014.

Her research explores ways in which English imaginative literature of the seventeenth century was not only responsive to but a part of scientific progress, with particular interests in early modern women’s writing and the reciprocal influence between corpuscular philosophy and theological thought.

Cassie's first monograph, The Atom in Seventeenth-Century Poetry (D.S. Brewer, 2021), investigates a remarkable ‘poetics of the atom’ in the early modern period, through which poets and philosophers sought positive, spiritual motivation in the concept of material indivisibility. She has also published papers on Henry More, Lucy Hutchinson and Thomas Traherne, and co-edited a volume of essays on the latter with the theologian Elizabeth Dodd: Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth Century Thought (D.S. Brewer, 2016). Cassie is one of the leads for the AHRC-DFG funded project, Scientific Poetry and Poetics in Britain and Germany, From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (1580-1750). She is a former member of the Executive Committee for the international research group Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World.

• Seventeenth-century literature and natural philosophy
• Atomism and poetry
• Alchemy
• Early modern literature and medicine
• Devotional poetry
• Early modern women writers (especially the writings of Margaret Cavendish, Lucy Hutchinson and Hester Pulter)
• Thomas Traherne
• John Milton

Cassie would be pleased to hear from potential students with interests in early modern literature, especially in relation to the following:

• Early modern literature and science
• Early modern literature and philosophy
• Early modern literature and the occult
• Early modern devotional poetry
• Early modern women’s writing
• John Milton
• Thomas Traherne

Cassie currently teaches on the following modules:

• Level 4: Reading Critically, Old English to the Enlightenment
• Level 5: Crocodiles, Pirates and Moon-men: Renaissance Encounters
• Level 6: Spectacle and Representation in Renaissance Drama
• Level 6: Renaissance Magic
• Level 7: Research Methods

PhD English, University of Cambridge
MPhil Renaissance Literature, University of Cambridge
BA English, University of Cambridge

• From 2018 to 2022 Cassie served on the Executive Committee for the international research group Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World
• Book series editor, Early Modern Scientific Poetry (Brill)
• Member of the Society for Renaissance Studies
• Fellow, Higher Education Academy, UK

Gorman, C., 2025. ‘Hurled headlong’ or ‘headlong hurl’d’: John Milton, Henry More, and Cosmopoetics. Milton Quarterly, 59:2 (Wiley), pp. 51-64.

Gorman, C., 2024. The Imperfect Circle: Hester Pulter’s Alchemical Forms. In Poesy of Scientia in Early Modern England, ed. Elizabeth Swann and Subha Mukherji (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 55-79.

Gorman, C., 2023. The Neoplatonic Cosmology and Poetry of Anne Southwell. Parergon, 40:2, pp. 87-107.

Gorman, C., 2023. Atomies of Love: Materialist Cupids in Elizabethan Poetry. In Luis-Martínez, Z. Poetic Theory and Practice in English Renaissance Verse: Unwritten Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 74-100.

Gorman, C., 2021.The Atom in Seventeenth-Century Poetry. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.

Gorman, C., 2017. Allegorical Analogies: Henry More’s Poetical Cosmology. Studies in Philology, 114 (1). pp. 148-70.

Gorman, C., 2016. Poetry and Atomism in the Civil War and Restoration. Literature Compass, 13 (9). pp. 560-71.

Dodd, E., and Gorman, C., 2016. Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth Century Thought. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Gorman, C., 2016. Feeling Inside the Atom. In: Dodd, E., and Gorman, C., Thomas Traherne and Seventeenth Century Thought. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer. pp. 98-119.

Gorman, C., 2013. Lucy Hutchinson, Lucretius and Soteriological Materialism. The Seventeenth Century, 28 (3). pp. 293-309.

Gorman, C., 2013. Thomas Traherne’s intuitive knowledge of “ALL THINGS” in the Commentaries of Heaven. In: Brocking, I., Caradec, J., and Parc, C. (Eds.), Poetry and Religion: Figures of the Sacred. Bern: Peter Lang. pp. 35-54

(2026) “Poetic Mock-Physic: The Curious Case of the Maid and the Carpenter”. Early Modern Poetry and Science conference, University of York, 25-27 June 2026

(2025) “Traherne’s Infant as Philosopher: A Reappraisal”. Traherne Association and Vaughan Association Study Day, Hay-on-Wye, 6 September 2025

(2025) “‘I am all a storm’: Chaos and Disordered Matter in the Writings of Jane Cavendish and Frances Feilding”. Women Writing Natural Philosophy in Early Modern Europe: Spaces and Exchanges, University of Exeter, 2-4 June 2025

(2025) “Balls of Mercury and Wax: Throwing Spherical Objects in Anne Southwell’s Verse”. Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Boston, 20-22 March 2025

(2025) “Chaos in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry”. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Boston, 20-22 March 2025

(2024) “Chemical endings in seventeenth-century women’s manuscript poetry: Jane Cavendish and Octavia Walsh”. Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, 11-14 June 2024

(2024) “‘Laughing Matters: Humour, Physics and Metaphysics in Early Modern Women’s Manuscript Poetry’. Materialism and Metaphysics in Early Modernity, York, 16-17 May 2024

(2023) “Air and Angels: Atmospheric Science and Early Modern Women’s Devotional Poetry”. Society for Renaissance Studies Biennial Conference, Liverpool, 19-22 July 2023

(2023) “‘Hurled headlong’ or ‘headlong hurl’d’: John Milton, Henry More, and a Shared Cosmological Poetics”. 13th International Milton Symposium, University of Toronto, 10-14 July 2023

(2022) “Wax Balls and Wings: The Cosmological Poetics of Anne Southwell”. Down to Earth: Literary Form, Didactics, and the Natural World, c.1550-1750, University of Bayreuth, 29-20 September 2022.

(2022) “Mythographic Matter and Metaphysics: Atoms and Cupids in Elizabethan Love Poetry”. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Dublin, 30 March – 2 April 2022.

(2021) “Alchemical Melting and Compassion in Lucy Hutchinson’s Order and Disorder”. Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World, online, 9-12 June 2021.

(2019) “Atomies of Love: Renaissance Lyric and the Poetics of Small Things”. Speaking Pictures: A Symposium on English Renaissance Poetics, University of Huelva, 29-30 October 2019.

(2019) “Atomic Congruity: ‘Atom-lives’ in the Poetry of Henry More”. Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World, Queen’s University Belfast, 12-15 June 2019.

(2018) “Alchemy and Poetic Form: The Chymical-Devotional Lyrics of Hester Pulter”. International conference Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early World, University of Minnesota, 16-19 May 2018

(2017) “Material Spirits: Thomas Traherne’s Atoms and Souls”. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Chicago, 30 March – 1 April 2017

(2017) “Hester Pulter’s Atom Worlds”. Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge, 4 March 2017

(2016) “In Indivisibles I’ll Trust: Hester Pulter’s Devotional Atomism”. Early Modern Works by and about Women, conference at the Department of Philosophy, McGill University, 4-6 November 2016

(2015) “Allegorical Analogies: The Poetical Construction of Henry More’s Cosmology”. Renaissance Society of America Conference, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, 26-28 March 2015 

(2014) “Feeling Inside the Atom in Seventeenth-century Literature”. EMPHASIS, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 6 December 2014 

(2014) “Reading Between the Lines: John Dee’s Mysteriorum Libri”. Centre for Editing Lives and Letters, University College London, 27 November 2014 

(2014) “Atomism in Seventeenth-century Culture”.  Cabinet of Natural History Seminar, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, 27 January 2014