"Do I speak language or does language speak me?"

The British poet and philosopher of language Denise Riley tackled this question in a campus talk March 30. She took an attentive audience of Cornell graduate students and faculty members on a heady journey through the history of thinking about thinking, from Cartesian dualism to Michel Foucault's postmodernism, alighting briefly on dozens of philosophers in between.

Riley, who teaches European philosophy, modernism, art history, poetics and creative writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, will spend fall 2007 as a Society for the Humanities senior scholar. In addition to pursuing her own work, Riley will present a seminar and mentor other scholars.

In an interview Riley said, "I'm trying to find a way of writing quite simply and without a great deal of fuss about the poetic qualities of everyday language. I'm naively keen on having what I'm trying to do not be a mystery to people. Not because I think it's very recherché or profound, because it isn't. But you know, it's very easy to accidentally frighten or unintentionally mystify readers of poetry in various ways."

"Denise Riley is not only a scholar of enormous stature but, within feminist thought, a historical figure in her own right," says Brett de Bary, director of the Society for the Humanities. "She is a thinker of great originality working at the intersections of creative writing, phenomenology and science."

"Riley's presence at the society will help to bring gender issues to the foreground of the theme of reason and improvisation," says Amy Villarejo, director of the Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. "Denise demonstrated during her time at Cornell an apparently limitless curiosity, a real empathy and ear for others' work and an independence of mind and of spirit that will spark further discussion. What more could we want in a senior fellow?"

Riley wanted to be a painter but instead studied English at the University of Oxford on a scholarship. She transferred to the University of Cambridge to study philosophy, taking an undergraduate degree in "moral sciences" and fine arts and later a philosophy doctorate. Raising three children as a single parent, she worked in hospitals and schools and published regularly.

"There was a lot of holding on to cliff edges," she said. "I belonged to the late-'60s generation. There was a critical culture which had a life independent of the universities altogether in Britain, with critical exchange on and off the page." She did not get the British equivalent of a tenured academic post until she was in her middle 40s.

When she returns to Cornell, Riley will continue her work with a "flexibility that is itself a political stance. It's the nonhierarchical, nonponderous critical approach, trying to keep alive that critical edge that isn't too reverent."

As revelations about brain function begin to answer centuries of philosophical speculation about how the brain actually works, new avenues of inquiry open for scholars of language.

"I hope that what I'm doing is piling up hints that will serve as forms of speculation that will keep people company along the way," Riley says. "That would be great."