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’s PhD research focuses on the works of Marcel Proust, as well as on 20th Century ideas about textual relations (Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricoeur and Walter Benjamin). His dissertation contemplates the history of literature comprised within Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu as well as this author’s theories of reading.
Key words: Proust, 19th Century Literature, 19th and 20th Century Philosophy, Literary Theory, Intertextuality, Displacement, Mimesis, Narrative Reconfiguration.
Scholarships/Prizes
FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (PT), Doctoral Research Scholar
Fellowships
Portuguese Heraldry Institute (Sócio Agregado)
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)
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.
Other activities and roles
Graduate Representative of The Ruskin Society (UK)
