Research
My main research interests are in the field of nineteenth-century poetry. I have written a book on Corbière, an innovative poet of the 1870s, entitled Tristan Corbière and the Poetics of Irony. More recently, I have been working on Romantic verse, in particular a study of progress in Victor Hugo’s poetry, which is part of a broader reflection on what happens to ideas when they are incorporated into poetry. I am co-directeur of the journal Cahiers Tristan Corbière, published by Garnier, and a member of the Groupe Hugo, based at the Université Paris Diderot (papers I have given at their seminar are available online at http://groupugo.div.jussieu.fr/ ).
Teaching
French language and literature, especially nineteenth-century literature. I lecture on Baudelaire, Stendhal, and other nineteenth-century topics. I teach the following Paper XI authors: Stendhal, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Duras. I teach for the following Paper XIIs: ‘French Romanticism: Writing and Revolution’, ‘French Poetry 1870-1918’, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts’.
Graduate Teaching
I teach for the M.St. Special Subject on Nineteenth-Century Poetry. I have supervised graduate research on topics ranging from Romanticism to Decadence, including Aloysius Bertrand, Laforgue, Maeterlinck, and Péladan. I would be glad to supervise projects on a range of nineteenth-century subjects, especially those involving poetry or thought.
Publications
‘ “Le Satyre” and the Incorporation of Thought’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 48 (2019), 80-97.
Editor, with Richard Hibbitt, Tristan Corbière, Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots: selected poetry and prose in translation, translated by Christopher Pilling with an introduction by Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe (White Rose University Press, 2018). https://doi.org/10.22599/Corbiere
‘Lyric and Memory: Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s “Tristesse” ’, French Forum, 42 (2017), 217-232.
‘Transformations in Victor Hugo’s Cosmic Poetry’, Dix-Neuf, 20 (2016), 278-90.
French Romantic Poetry’, in Handbook on European Romanticism, ed. by Paul Hamilton (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 122-139.
'Humanity's Struggle with Nature in Victor Hugo's Poetry of Progress', Modern Language Review, 107 (2012) 143-61
'Changing Constellations in Victor Hugo's Contemplations', in 'When familiar meanings dissolve...': Essays in French Studies in Memory of Malcolm Bowie, ed. by Naomi Segal and Gill Rye (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), 83-96
'Progress as Idea and Image in Victor Hugo's "Force des choses"', Dix-neuf, 13 (2009), 36-54
'Death and the Aesthetic of Continuity: Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations', French Studies, 62 (2008), 13-25
Tristan Corbière and the Poetics of Irony, Oxford Modern Languages Monographs (Oxford: OUP, 2006)
'"Intérêt et Principal": Nineteenth-Century Borrowings of La Fontaine's "La Cigale et la fourmi"', in: Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 89-100
'Paris as Bazaar: Tristan Corbière's Poetry of the City', Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 33 (2004), 120-34
'Voice-Defying Lyricism: Tristan Corbière's "Les Amours jaunes"', French Studies, 56 (2002), 165-78