Alastair J, Minnis, born in 1948, is a Northern Irish literary critic and historian of ideas who has written extensively about medieval literature, and contributed substantially to the study of late-medieval theology and philosophy.
Minnis has held the post of the Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale University since 2008.
"Characteristically, my research methodology brings together reading strategies from literary criticism and the history of ideas, and an interest in medieval philosophy and theology has informed much of my work. My latest monograph is From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)"