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Emeritus Professor of French,
My main research interests are in nineteenth-century French fiction, especially that of Honoré de Balzac, and the twentieth-century French intellectual and critic Roland Barthes.
My main research specialisms are nineteenth-century realism, especially Balzac and Flaubert, and the work of Roland Barthes.
Post-war French women's writing; the French nineteenth-century novel, especially Flaubert and Balzac.
My current research project is a monograph on the notion of the 'Vita nova' in Roland Barthes's very late writing.
My early research was on issues of language and representation in the novels of Gustave Flaubert. I then worked extensively on Roland Barthes, publishing a monograph on Barthes as a utopian writer as well as editing two collections of essays on his work. I have also published work on other nineteenth-century French authors, and on narrative and feminist theory. From around 2000 I have worked intensively on Balzac, and published a monograph (2007) on issues of realism and representation in his artist stories. In 2013, I returned to research on Roland Barthes and I was especially active in 2015, the centenary of his birth which led to academic conferences throughout the world and to special issues of journals devoted to his work.
I shall continue to publish on Barthes, as well as the gendering of celibacy, marriage and homosexuality in Balzac's novels.
University Park Nottingham, NG7 2RD
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