Professor Seth is the Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College. She works on the long eighteenth century and is a specialist of French literature and cultural history. She has published widely on topics which extend from Marie-Antoinette to Parny, from women’s writing to émigré fiction and from inoculation to foundlings. Professor Seth’s lecture is entitled: Girls with books: reading, contagion and acquired immunity in 18th-century fiction.

During her inaugural lecture, Professor Seth will show how the figure of the woman reader is central to our understanding of 18th-century intellectual life in France. Medical knowledge of the period offers analogies for imagining the actions of characters but also of those who pored over their adventures in bestsellers like Rousseau’s Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse or Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Beyond specific texts, this invites us to think about the ways in which fiction works.

Prof. Seth would be delighted if you could join her at a reception at the Codrington Library, All Souls College, following the lecture.

Please note that the Taylor Institution will be open from 4.45pm.

Please email events@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk should you have any access requirements.

Dress code: Tenue de Ville