Research
Making Ulysses French
My next book-length project examines the political and social uses of classical texts in early modern France.
Epistolarity
My last book, Les Lettres romaines de Du Bellay: Les Regrets et la tradition épistolaire, appeared in the Fall of 2001. Du Bellay, a French humanist poet on a diplomatic mission in Rome between 1553 and 1557, used the sonnet, traditionally associated with love poetry, as a tool for secretly commenting on political and literary issues among like-minded men. Du Bellay also subverts the function of the letter itself: originally destined to bridge a distance, he uses the letter to create distance, to remain always de-centered no matter where he might be.
