Professor Carole J.A. Bourne-Taylor (nee Rodier)

Position

Associate Professor in French

Fellow and Organising Tutor in French (since 2009)

Senior Research Fellow (2024), Maison de la Création et de l'Innovation, Grenoble-Alpes (UGA). International Excellence in the Humanities Fellowship Program, funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, France 2030.

Curator of the Senior Common Room

Senior Member of the Pater Society - the Brasenose College society for the Arts (named after Walter Pater, a Classicist and Fellow of the College)

Qualifications

BA, MA (Grenoble Alpes, UGA), Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies (UGA), MA (Oxon.), PhD (UGA)

Academic Background and Previous Positions

Lecturer at Brasenose College since 1999; Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature at Warwick University (2000-2003); Lecturer in English at Montpellier University (1995-1996) and Junior Research Fellow (Monitrice d'Enseignement Supérieur) in Comparative Literature at Grenoble University (1992-1995).

Visiting Professor at Vilnius University, Lithuania, September 2019.

Undergraduate Teaching Areas

XIXth-XXIth Century literature in French (which includes literature from North Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean); Roland Barthes; prose and grammar.

I welcome applications from excellent students, whoever they are and wherever they come from!

My passion for my subject is well illustrated in many of my letters to The Times.

Graduate Teaching Areas

D. Phil.: Modern Literature (French/English or American) and Phenomenology; modern and contemporary French poetry; literature and music (I am currently working on Jeremy Thurlow’s musical adaptations of texts by Virginia Woolf and English and French poets); literature and ethics; comparative literature (particularly with respect to the work of Virginia Woolf).

Co-convenor of the Oxford M. St. Paper, The Power of Literature: Language, Perception and World-Making in Modern and Post-Modern French Poetry.

Research Interests

(Post-)modernism and phenomenology; reception studies; comparative studies; modern & contemporary French poetry; literature & ethics; literature and music; life writing.

Main publications

L'Univers imaginaire de Virginia Woolf (preface by Jean Guiguet; postface by Gilbert Durand), Paris, Editions du Temps, 2001. Read a review by Constance Hunting in the Virginia Woolf Bulletin no. 10 (May 2002)
Other publications on Virginia Woolf include:
- ‘The French Reception of Woolf: An État Présent of Etudes Woolfiennes’, in M-A. Caws & Nicola Luckhurst (eds.), The Reception of Virginia Woolf in Europe, London, Continuum, 2002.
- ‘The Ekstasis of Influence: Virginia Woolf’s Mediterranean Experience’, in Bryony Randall & J. Goldman (eds), Virginia Woolf in Context, CUP, 2013.
- ‘“The Journey is everything’: Virginia Woolf’s Continental Adventure”, in Ariane Mildenberg & Patricia Novillo-Corvalan (eds), Virginia Woolf, Europe and Peace, Clemson University Press [28th Annual International Conference, Kent University, June 2018]. 2020.

Phenomenology, Modernism and Beyond, edited with Ariane Mildenberg (preface by Kevin Hart), Oxford, Peter Lang, 2010. It includes my chapter, ‘Figures of Immanence/Imminence: "Enigma Variations" in Michel Deguy's works'.
Reviews in Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 73 (4), 2011; Modernist Cultures 6 (2), October 2011; Comparative Critical Studies 9 (2), June 2012; Modern Fiction Studies 58 (1), Spring 2012; The Modern Language Review, 107 (4), October 2012; The Years Work in English Studies 92 (1), 2013.

Introductions to Charles Morgan's Three Plays and Dramatic Critic. Selected Reviews 1922-39, London, Oberon, 2013. http://www.theartsshelf.com/2013/05/14/oberon-books-celebrate-dramatic-critic-charles-morgan-with-two-new-releases/
Review of Three Plays and Dramatic Critic from the Times Literary Supplement, 22 Jan 2014
(My peripheral interest in the life and work of Charles Langbridge Morgan - The Times drama critic and alumnus of Brasenose College led to a lecture at the Oxford & Cambridge Club on 1st April 2014. See The Brazen Nose, (Volume 44, 2009-10, p. 120-7) for a snippet of Morgan’s art.)

The bulk of my more recent work has focused on poethic figurations of grief and mourning and their status within an exploration of the kinship between literature and life and the search for ethical restitution.
Variations on The Ethics of Mourning in Modern Literature in French, edited with Sara-Louise Cooper (preface by Dominique Rabaté), Peter Lang, 2021 (see review (1) here, (2) here, and (3) here. My own contribution includes the critical introduction and a chapter on the poets Emmanuel Merle and Yves Bonnefoy.

I have published numerous articles/chapters/reviews on a variety of topics and authors: Shakespeare, Walter Scott, Katherine Mansfield, Arthur Miller, Paul Auster, Lady Anne Blunt, Paul Valéry, Michel Deguy, Yves Bonnefoy, Emmanuel Merle, Michel Houellebecq, Sarah Bernhardt, Kamel Daoud, Annie Ernaux and…Nation Branding (Cool Britannia).
Another interest of mine is the performing arts (drama and music and their phenomenological unfurling of the written text). In this vein, I have published an article on the Cambridge composer Jeremy Thurlow’s adaptations of Yves Bonnefoy’s poetry to music and I am currently writing a biography of Alice Sapritch (to be published by the Éditions Garnier, Paris).

E-mail

carole.bourne-taylor@bnc.ox.ac.uk

Links

http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/