Name: Duarte Benard da Costa
College: Peterhouse
Email: da486@cam.ac.uk
Supervisor: Prof Ian James (Downing College)
Research Topic: Marcel Proust and Intertextuality
About
Duarte completed his Comparative Literature MA at UCL in 2021, with a dissertation on Marcel Proust and John Ruskin, supervised by Dr Patrick Bray. His research focused on the relation between citationality and idolatry within these authors’ works. Duarte holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Lisbon, having spent one academic year at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge, as an Erasmus Exchange Student reading English. For his final dissertation he researched on maps, spatiality and literature, namely in the works of Charles Dickens and Henry James, under the supervision of Dr Daniel Tyler (Trinity Hall). Duarte has worked as an independent academic and literary translator, his latest project being a first Portuguese translation of Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds. He has published critical writings as well as creative pieces in paper and online publications, such as the newspaper Público, or Forma de Vida, the University of Lisbon’s Literary Theory Review.
Research
Duarte encourages and welcomes contact from students wishing to carry out undergraduate dissertation, or from prospective students, in topics relevant to the following research interests: 19th and 20th Century Novel; Intersections between literary genres; Intertextuality; Comparative Literature; 19th and 20th century French Thought and Literary Theory (Baudelaire, Sainte-Beuve, Proust, Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur); Lusophone and Francophone Dialogues in Literature and Film (Agustina Bessa-Luís, Manoel d’Oliveira); Autobiographical and memorialist novel (e.g.: François-Renée de Chateaubriand); 19th Century Novel in France and the UK, namely Balzac, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Anthony Trollope.
Scholarships/Prizes
FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (PT), Doctoral Research Scholar
Friends of Peterhouse Grant for Language Study (2022-24)
Bruckmann Fund Travel Grant (Easter, 2023)
Fellowships
Portuguese Heraldry Institute (Sócio Agregado)
Teaching
Course Supervisor: FR6 – Innovation and Upheaval: Deformation and Reformulation in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Conference papers
“And this secret still keeps my tongue in chains: Intertextuality and Queerness in Proust”, University of Cambridge, Center for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), The (Im)possibilities of Queer Presentism Conference (26th April 2023)
"Proust against theory", University of Cambridge French Research Graduate Seminar (9th February 2023);
“Marcel Proust and Philosophy”, Graduate Symposium, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge (4th February 2023)
"Literary solitude: Displacement and communities in Marcel Proust", University of Cambridge French Graduate Conference (12th January 2023);
"Heráldica em Literatura: o caso de Marcel Proust", Portuguese Heraldry Institute ( 16th November, 2022).
"Quoting and Misquoting, in Reference to John Ruskin and Marcel Proust", UCL Quo Vadis: Arts and Humanities Research in the 21st Century Online Conference (23rd July 2021)
Invited talk, “On Origins: Julia Kristeva”, All Souls College, Oxford French Graduate Research Seminar (28th May 2024)
“Marcel Proust”, University of Cambridge, French Society Research Day (20th November 2023)
Publications
«Reler Proust/Reading Proust Twice» (Brotéria, vol. 196-2), February 2023
"Hunter Dukes, signature" (Forma de Vida), June 15, 2022;
"Cynthia Gamble, Voix Entrelacées de Proust et de Ruskin" (Forma de Vida), February 9, 2022.
*“Heráldica e Literatura: Os Guermantes e os Cambremer in Marcel Proust” [Heraldry and Literature: Guermantes and Cambremer in Marcel Proust], in Armas e Troféus (Instituto Português de Heráldica, Lisbon: 2024) (forthcoming 2025)
Other activities and roles
Graduate Representative of The Ruskin Society (UK)
Co-convenor of the Cambridge French Graduate Research Seminar (FGRS), with Maddison Sumner and Tobias Barnett.
Panel Chair for The Society for French Studies (https://www.sfs.ac.uk/) Postgraduate Conference 2024, King’s College London, on the topic of «Care and Deviations».
Participant in the 2023 Choix Prix Goncourt UK, Cambridge Delegation.
Outreach Lecture on “Is Literature Dangerous? Marcel Proust and the risks of reading”, Peterhouse Outreach Programme for year 11s, (Michaelmas, 2023).
