Postdoctoral Affiliate in French

College: King’s                    

Email: ajb287@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Dr Timothy Chesters

Research Topic: Medievalism in the French Renaissance: Literature, History, and Nation in Claude Fauchet’s Veilles ou Observations (1555)

About

Anton studied Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge for his BA. He specialised in pre-modern European literature, taking papers in medieval and Renaissance French, medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature and history, and neo-Latin (pts I and II). Anton also spent his year abroad (2013-14) in Paris, where he took papers in ancient, medieval and early modern philosophy at the Sorbonne (Paris IV).

After graduating, he won a scholarship to the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, where he studied contemporary international relations and specialised in the history of nineteenth-century European diplomacy.

As a student on the ELAC MPhil at Cambridge, Anton took the Early Modern Pathway, taking papers in palaeography and early modern material culture. His thesis explored the perception of medieval literature in the French Renaissance, particularly in the Recueil de l’origine de la langue et poesie françoise of Claude Fauchet (1581).

Research       

Anton’s doctoral research focuses on the reception of medieval French literature in the mid-sixteenth century. He uses an unpublished manuscript miscellany by Claude Fauchet (1530-1602) entitled the Veilles ou Observations (1555) to explore the place of medieval vernacular literature and culture in the construction of French national identity at that time. He combines traditional study of contemporary literary and intellectual culture with a book-historical approach to show that the recovery of the native literary past played a hitherto overlooked role in the crafting of early modern French identity.

Scholarships/Prizes

R. Gapper Postgraduate Essay Prize 2020 (Society for French Studies)

Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities (2018-2021)

Amy Wygant Research Bursary 2018 (Society for Early Modern French Studies)

Teaching       

Fr1 (‘Introduction to French Literature, Linguistics, Film and Thought’) – lecturing and small group teaching first year students

FrB2 (‘Translation from French’) – lecturing on translating sixteenth-century French

Fr4 (‘Rethinking the Human: French Literature, Thought and Culture, 1500-1700’) – lecturing and small group teaching for second year students

Fr8 (‘Wondrous Forms in the Age of Montaigne’) – lecturing and small group teaching for final year students.

Conference papers

Panels organised

‘What if…? Early Modern Counterfactuals’, Society for French Studies Annual Conference, University of Belfast, July 2022

Papers

‘Old French in the Seventeenth Century: Discovery or Recovery?’, MLA Annual Convention, Washington, D.C., 6 January 2022.

‘“O France ingrate et idigne de tel homme!”: Early Reception of Clément Marot’, Renaissance Society of America Annual Conference, virtual, 21 April 2021.

‘How the Past Became a Foreign Country: Lost Literature and the Rhetoric of Exile in Early Modern Europe’, ‘Between Self and State: Exile in the Early Modern World’, Cambridge University, 25 March 2021.

‘The Incomplete Work: French Renaissance Manuscript Culture Reconsidered’ Early Modern French Studies, ‘Incompleteness’, St Hilda’s College, Oxford, 3 September 2019.

‘The Italian Connection: Family Resemblances between Accademia Culture and Learned Circles in Renaissance Paris, c.1560-1581’, Society for French Studies Annual Conference, Royal Holloway, London, 1 July 2019.

‘Claude Fauchet, from Manuscript to Print: Rewriting the Narrative of Delay’, Cambridge French Graduate Conference, ‘Delays’, Cambridge University, 25 April 2019.

‘The significance of Claude Fauchet’s treatment of ancient Gaulish history in his Antiquitez gauloises and françoises (Book I)’, Early Modern French Studies, ‘Early Modern France in Early Modern Europe’, Peterhouse College, Cambridge, 3 September 2018.

‘Evidence of a French Renaissance Counterculture in the Recueil of Claude Fauchet’, Early Modern French Studies, ‘Modernity and its discontents’, Durham Castle, Durham, 11 September 2017

Publications

‘A Rediscovered Manuscript Translation of the First History of the French Language’, French Studies Bulletin (in press).

‘Linguistic and Material Counterculturalism in the French Renaissance: Claude Fauchet’s Recueil de l’origine de la langue et poésie françoise (1581)’, Early Modern French Studies, 40, 2 (December 2018), pp. 117-132.

Other activities and roles

Anton is a trustee of the Parnassus Trust, an educational charity which promotes access to ‘living Latin’ education and events.