He has made major contributions to several fields: literary theory, the forms and history of poetry, Irish fiction (especially the work of James Joyce), and South African literature.
Attridge attended Scottsville Government School and Maritzburg College in Pietermaritzburg, Natal, South Africa, and received his Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Natal University in South Africa before moving to the UK in 1966 to complete his Master of Arts (MA) and PhD at Clare College, Cambridge.
[6][7] Academics from several countries gave talks, and there were readings from leading poets (Don Paterson, Paul Muldoon, John Wilkinson) and novelists (Tom McCarthy, Emma Donoghue, Zoë Wicomb).
Based on Attridge's PhD thesis, this remains the standard study of the attempts to write English poetry in the metres of Latin verse.
A comprehensive account of the use of rhythm and meter in English poetry that pioneered an approach challenging the traditional use of Greek and Roman terminology and now frequently adopted in poetic studies.
"[8] It was followed by Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 1995, "lucid and entertaining"[9]), Meter and Meaning: An Introduction to Rhythm and Poetry (with Thomas Carper; Routledge, 2003), and Moving Words: Forms of English Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2013), a book that "should be read by all aspiring poets".
One reviewer commented, "Attridge shows in this book (as in his earlier Rhythms of English Poetry) a very impressive clarity and fluency of exposition: as an elucidator of tropes he has few equals.
A spectacularly rich and vast storehouse of poetic history, both convincingly homogeneous as a longue durée and absorbing in its smaller diverse details.