Early Modern French Seminar

30 April 12:30
St John’s College, Oxford (Mark Bedingham Seminar Room)
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'The Making of Modern Languages: Disciplinary History in the Archives'
Emma Gilby (Cambridge University)

Abstract

My current research investigates the early history of modern languages as a university discipline. Prompted by my own encounter with the interwar editorial work of two early modernists (H. Bibas and K.T. Butler), I envisage this as a network study, expanding outwards from these two women via their predecessors, role models, colleagues, sisters, correspondents etc. The aim is to offer glimpses of connections and affinities that suggest and enrich a much bigger picture. Who were the first modern linguists, and what kinds of modern lives did they want to lead? What did they borrow from the study of ancient languages, and what did they reject? This paper will consider Kathleen Butler’s reception of the medievalist Jessie L. Weston (1850-1928), in the form of undergraduate reading and lecture notes (Newnham College, Cambridge, c. 1910). It will also take in the wider impact of Weston, and of her medievalism, in other teaching archives, notably that of Mary Williams, appointed to the Chair of French Language and Literature in Swansea in 1921.

Biography

Emma Gilby is Professor of Early Modern French Literature and Thought at the University of Cambridge. Her recent work includes Descartes and the Non-Human (Cambridge University Press Elements, Environmental Humanities Series, 2025). Her interest in critical reception and disciplinary history led to a Leverhulme-funded project entitled A New Modernism: Women and the Making of Modern Languages. The project traces the development of a pioneering network of early linguists, focusing on their internationalist perspective, their use of the medieval and early modern periods as a point of cultural comparison, and their impact on literary criticism as well as language study.

The Early Modern French Seminar is convened by Wes Williams (St Edmund Hall), Rachel Hindmarsh (St Catherine’s College), and Marina Perkins (The Queen’s College)