Ph.D. Rutgers University

On Leave Spring 2008

 Research:  Early modern French and continental literature; rhetoric and poetics; Montaigne's Essais;  women writers,  particularly Marguerite de Navarre; and Renaissance Lyon.

 Representative  publications:

• Les terrains vagues des «Essais»: Itinéraires et intertextes.  Etudes montaignistes # 25, Paris/Geneva: Champion/Slatkine, 1996.
• Critical Tales: New Studies of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron and Early Modern Culture.  University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. (co-editor with John Lyons and contributor)
• Marie Dentière. Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by Calvin. Translation with Critical Introduction and Notes, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, University of Chicago Press, 2004.

 Recent articles:

• Dictionnaire Montaigne, ed. P. Desan, Paris, Champion, 2004. Entries on Marguerite de Valois, Ovid, Horace, Virgil, Citations, Auteurs latins, and les Anciens.
• “Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre et la dédicace du Tiers Livre: voyages mystiques et missions terrestres,” Romanic Review, 94, 1-2, 2003, 171-183.
•  “Parrots and Poets: Writing Alterities in Lemaire de Belges and Scève,” Self and Other in Sixteenth-Century France, Cambridge (UK) French Renaissance Colloquia, 2004, 1-14.
•  "Lire les Essais: 1969-1997, lectures de la lecture," Lire les Essais de Montaigne, Actes du Colloque de Glasgow 1997, ed. Noël Peacock and James J. Supple, Paris, Honoré Champion, 2001, 15-26.
•  "Agony, Ecstasy, and the Mulekeeper's Wife: a Reading of Heptaméron 2," in A French Forum: Mélanges de littérature française offerts à Raymond C. et Virginia A. La Charité, ed. Gérard Defaux and Jerry Nash, Paris, Klincksieck, 2000, 129-142.
•  "L'Heptaméron: oeuvre composite," «D'une fantastique bigarrure»: le texte composite à la Renaissance. Etudes offertes à André Tournon, Paris, Honoré Champion,2000, 45-56.
•  "The Absent Ellipsis: the Edition and Suppression of Marie Dentière in the XVIth and the XIXth Centuries," in Women Writers in Pre-Revolutionary France: Strategies of Emancipation, ed. Colette Winn, New York, Garland Publishing Co., 1997, 85-99.
•  "Marot, Marguerite de Navarre et L'Epistre du despourveu," in Clément Marot. <Prince des poètes francoys> Actes du Colloque International Clément Marot, Cahors, 21-25 mai, 1996, éd. Gérard Defaux, Paris, H. Champion, 1997, 613-626.

 Teaching:   I incorporate an introduction to rare books and sixteenth-century book production in all of my graduate courses, most recently including Montaigne,  Rabelais, Pre-Pléiade Poetry, Marguerite de Navarre et son Cercle, Une Ville à la Renaissance: Lyon 1530-1550.   The Gordon Collection in Alderman Library's Special Collections offers our students an outstanding resource.   In summer 2002 our department launched the first UVA in France summer program in Lyon; there I have been able to teach my course on Renaissance Lyon on site.   I frequently involve advanced graduate students as apprentice teaches in undergraduate courses such as Women Writers of the Renaissance; Sixteenth-Century Prose Writers: Erasmus, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne; and Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature.

The Renaissance in Print: the Douglas H. Gordon Collection

UVA summer program in Lyon

 Courses Fall 2005:

FREN 341 LITERATURE OF THE MIDDLE AGES & 16TH CENTURY - MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

The French Middle Ages and Renaissance, a period covering over 500 years, may seem like a faraway world of knights and crusaders, artists and explorers. Yet, modern culture continues to reveal its fascination with that distant past. Books from those centuries between 1050 and 1600 shaped ideals, tastes and cultural icons that continue to capture the imagination today. Our readings will include selections from La Chanson de Roland; Marie de France's Lais; Chrétien de Troyes Yvain; Christine de Pizan's La Cite des Dames; Rabelais's Pantagruel; Montaigne's Essais and some lyric poetry. They reveal changing notions of the hero and of love, and they question the individual's relationship to God, to society, and to the unknown. Taught in French with attention to improving written and oral expression. Three short papers totaling 12-15 pages, a mid-term and a final.

FREN 520/820 LITERARY LYON

Literary Lyon: Crossroads of commercial and cultural traffic between Italy and Paris, Flanders and the Mediterranean, Lyon was the hub of sixteenth-century Europe. Its flourishing printing industry made it a bustling center of book production, and its distance from Paris allowed it greater freedom than the capital knew. We will study the printers and booksellers of Lyon and work with their products in our library's Gordon Collection. Between 1530 and 1560 Lyon celebrated the creativity of its own sons and daughters and of the writers it welcomed and nurtured. Marot, Rabelais, "Jeanne Flore," Dolet, Scève, Du Guillet, Labé and Aneau are some of the Lyonnais de souche ou de passage whose works and careers we will study.

 Courses Fall 2004:

FREN 402: LITTÉRATURE DE LA RENAISSANCE

Upheaval, discovery, challenge and innovation mark the literary creations of Renaissance France. Sixteenth-century France witnessed the Protestant Reformation, the Copernican Revolution and discoveries of worlds both Ancient and New. The printed page was the novel medium that brought change to a newly literate society. In Erasmus's Praise of Folly, Rabelais's Gargantua, Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron and Montaigne's Essais, we will see how writers both recorded and shaped their turbulent times. Three short papers, a mid-semester and a final exam.

FREN 520/820 SEMINAR: RABELAIS AND HIS WORLD

The tales of Pantagruel and Gargantua enact a drama of upheaval, portraying and challenging early-modern notions of language and narrative. Can language lead to knowledge? How do words signify? And who can interpret them? What is the relevance of the word made print to the Word made flesh? While reading closely Pantagruel, Gargantua, Tiers Livre and Quart Livre, we will examine sixteenth-century notions of history, giants, the New World and religious reform. We will make brief forays into the works of writers in Rabelais's " circle": Erasmus, Marot and Marguerite de Navarre. Visits to the Gordon Collection will orient students to the use of rare books and to the history of early printed book production. Requirements: an oral presentation and a seminar paper. M.A. students are welcome in this seminar.

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