Marlène Beghin

Please tell us about your research project.
I am preparing a PhD in Art History and Philosophy at EPHE Paris and EHESS Paris (PSL Research Universities). In my thesis, I consider theories and images of dreams in France during the 14th century and take a multidisciplinary approach to examine them as historical sources for an anthropology of dreams. I state my interest in the library of king Charles V in Paris, where the king ordered the translation of many philosophical treatises into vernacular French, from Latin antique philosophical treatises or medieval encyclopedias. The guiding idea of my thesis is to consider dreams as a certain kind of knowledge: more precisely, a “bizarre knowledge”, where the strangeness of the cognitive experience contaminates the way texts and images express it. My concern is to investigate, through the forms of this bizarre knowledge, the epistemological and ethical function given to bizarreness in the context of the reformulation into French of antique and scholastic philosophy.

Could you please tell us a bit more about your scholarship/exchange programme?
I came to the MFO for a one-term residency thanks to the EPHE-PSL residency programme for PhD students. My stay here allows me to enrich my approach to research by getting involved in Oxford's effervescent scientific activities and consulting a certain number of significant but undigitized manuscripts in Oxford’s libraries.

First impressions of Oxford/the University?
A very old city with very young people.