Professor Robin Howells
Emeritus Professor
BA (Q'ld), PhD (Lond)
Professor of French, 17th and 18th century literature; the Carnivalesque
Contact details
Department of European Cultures and Languages
Birkbeck, University of London
43 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PD
E-mail: r.howells@bbk.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7631 6178
Profile
Robin specialises in 17th and 18th century French literature (Classicism and - principally - Enlightenment).
His main interests include religion and history of ideas, the novel (French and English), genre and rewriting, structuralist and Freudian approaches. He also uses paradigms from Bakhtin (carnivalesque; dialogism; polemical stupidity) to examine aspects of literature generally.
He has published substantially on:
- the Contes of Voltaire
- Rousseau, principally La Nouvelle Héloïse
- Mme de Graffigny
- the plays and novels of Marivaux
- the 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes', and Charles Perrault
- the concept of the Rococo
- the comic novel (Charles Sorel, Lesage)
- the Huguenots, chiefly Pierre Jurieu
His main research undertakings currently are further work on Mme de Graffigny, and a monograph on Sexuality and Regression in later 18C French Fiction.
Principal publications
In the fields of 17C and 18C French literature, history of ideas and religion
Books
Pierre Jurieu: Antinomian radical (Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 1983)
Voltaire and his world: studies presented to W.H. Barber, edited by R.J. Howells, Adrienne Mason, Haydn Mason and David Williams (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985)
Rousseau: La Nouvelle Héloïse (London: Grant & Cutler, 1986)Pierre Jurieu, Lettres pastorales, Introduction et notes par Robin Howells, (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1988)
Carnival to Classicism: the comic novels of Charles Sorel (Paris, Seattle, Tübingen: Biblio 17, 1989)
Disabled Powers: a reading of Voltaire's 'Contes' (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993)
Playing Simplicity: polemical stupidity in the writing of the French Enlightenment (Oxford, Bern, etc: Peter Lang, 2002)
Regressive fictions
Regressive Fictions: Graffigny, Rousseau, Bernardin. (Oxford: Legenda, 2007): Publisher's website
Articles classified
On Voltaire's Contes:
'Télémaque et Zadig: apports et rapports', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 215 (1982), 63-75
'"Cette boucherie héroïque": Candide as carnival', Modern Language Review, 80 (1985),293-303
'The Burlesque as a philosophical principle in Voltaire's Contes', in Voltaire and his world: studies presented to W.H. Barber [above], 67-84
'Processing Voltaire's Amabed', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 10 (1987), 153-62
Disabled Powers: a reading of Voltaire's 'Contes' [above]
'Voltaire's Contes: a review of studies 1969-1993', in 'Pour Encourager les autres'. Studies for the Tercentenary of Voltaire's Birth (Studies on Voltaire 320, 1994), 229-281
'City, market-place, meal: some figures of totality in Voltaire's Contes', in The Secular City. Studies in the Enlightenment, ed. T.D. Hemming et al (Exeter UP, 1994), 71-81
'Does Candide learn? Genre, discourse and satire in Candide', Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies 4 (1995), 145-54
'Pleasure principles: Tales, infantile naming, and Voltaire', Modern Language Review 92 (1997), 295-307
'Universal grotesque: Voltaire's Histoire des voyages de Scarmentado', L'invitation au voyage: Studies in Honour of Peter France, ed. John Renwick (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), 103-110
On Rousseau (principally La Nouvelle Héloïse):
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Literary Encyclopedia profile written by Robin Howells, Birkbeck, University of London
'Rousseau, Jean-Jacques', Literary Encyclopedia;
'The Metaphysic of Nature: basic values and their application in the social philosophy of Rousseau', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 60 (1968), 109-200
'La Folie de Chaillot: notes sur un personnage de La Nouvelle Héloïse', Australian Journal of French Studies, 21 (1984), 115-23
'Rousseau, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and the power of writing', Degré Second, 9 (1985), 15-31
'Désir et distance dans La Nouvelle Héloïse', Studies on Voltaire, 230 (1985), 223-32
Rousseau: La Nouvelle Héloïse [see above, Books]
'Deux histoires, un discours: La Nouvelle Héloïse et le récit des amours d'Emile et Sophie dans l'Emile', SVEC, 249 (1987), 243-70
'Romance/Racine/Rousseau: monologism and metatextuality in La Nouvelle Héloïse', in Literature within Literature, Romance Studies, 12 (1988), 7-17
'Œdipe-Narcisse: sur l'intertexte racinien dans La Nouvelle Héloïse', in L'Amour dans La Nouvelle Héloïse: texte et l'intertexte, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 44 (2002), 215-28
'"La Nouvelle Héloïse": les intertextes intimes du nom", Etudes Jean-Jacques Rousseau 13 (2002), 205-7
'Rousseau's fictions of sacrifice', SVEC 2003.7, 271-91
'Reading Rousseau's sexuality', in Women, Gender and Enlightenment ed. Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor (Palgrave, 2005), 174-88
On Voltaire and Rousseau
'Rousseau and Voltaire: A literary comparison of two "Professions de foi"', French Studies 49 (1995), 397-409'Candide and La Nouvelle Héloïse', British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies 29 (2006), 33-46
On Marivaux
'Marivaux and the Heroic', Studies on Voltaire, 171 (1977), 115-53
'Marivaux and the "fête": from consuming to narrating', French Studies, 39 (1985), 152-65
'"Little Me": Marianne, Jacob and seduction by self-deprecation', in Marivaux, Romance Studies, 15 (1989), 63-73
'Marivaux and Sexuality: an Oedipal reading of Marianne and the Paysan', French Studies, 44 (1990), 10-17
'Structure and meaning in the incipit of Marivaux's comedies', Modern Language Review, 86 (4) (1991), 839-51
'La Force maternelle', in Études sur 'L'École des mères' et 'La Mère confidente', Revue Marivaux 3 (1992), 114-120
'Le Discours burlesque dans Le Paysan parvenu', in Nouveaux Regards sur 'Le Paysan Parvenu', Revue Marivaux 6 (1997), 195-208
'Marivaux's Le Bilboquet (1714): the game as subversive principle', [Games in the Eighteenth Century], SVEC 2000.08, 175-8
'La Subversion dans les formes', in Marivaux subversif, ed. Franck Salaün (Paris: Desjonquères, 2003), 34-45
On Mme de Graffigny
'The Péruvienne and pathos', French Studies 55 (2002), 453-66
'Humiliation in Mme de Graffigny', in The Enterprise of Enlightenment: A Tribute to David Williams from his Friends, ed. Terry Pratt and David McCallam (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), 67-82
'Mme de Graffigny's story', Modern Language Review 99 (2004), 34-46
On the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes [1686-1717]:
'The Uses of Versailles in the Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes', Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 5 (1983), 70-77
'Dialogue and Speakers in the Parallèle des Anciens et des Modernes', Modern Language Review, 78 (1983), 793-803
'La Religion des "chefs" dans la Querelle: Boileau, Perrault, Dacier, La Motte', in D'un siècle à l'autre: Anciens et Modernes (Marseille: CMR 17, 1987), 53-62
'Rewriting Homer in the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes"', in Epic Inspiration, Romance Studies 17 (1990), pp.35-51
On the comic novel (Bakhtinian approaches)
Carnival to Classicism: the comic novels of Charles Sorel [above]
'Lecture bakhtinienne de Gil Blas', in Lesage, Ecrivain (1695-1735) ed. Jacques Wagner (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997), 231-48
'The Fool on the battlefield', Images of War, Romance Studies 30 (Autumn 1997), 35-45
'Candide as carnival' etc on Voltaire's contes [above]
' Marivaux and the "Fête" etc on Marivaux's prose fiction [above]
also 'Babel and parody in Duddy Kravitz' etc on CanLit [below]
On the Rococo
'The rise of the Rococo in French literature (1685-1700)', Studies on Voltaire 302, (1992), 95-115
'Rococo and Carnival', Studies on Voltaire 308, (1993), 185-221
`The Principle of Mobility in Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes', French Studies, 46 (1992), 129-43
Also
'Statut du romanesque: L'opposition Roman/Histoire dans la pratique signifiante de 1635 à 1785', in Folies romanesques au siècle des Lumières, ed. René Démoris and Henri Lafon (Paris: Desjonquères, 1998), 19-39
'The Secret Life: Marana's Espion du Grand Seigneur (1684-6)', French Studies 53 (1999), 153-66
On the Huguenots
Pierre Jurieu: Antinomian radical [above]
'"The World Upside-Down": populism and providence in the Lettres pastorales of Pierre Jurieu', Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, XXIV (6) (1988), 493-507
'Jurieu, Pierre', in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Third Edition, Oxford, 1997), 914
'Jurieu in dialogue: La Politique du clergé and Pascal's Lettres provinciales', in De l'Humanisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme. Mélanges en l'honneur d'Elisabeth Labrousse, ed. Michelle Magdelaine et al (Paris, Universitas; Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 1996), 525-33
Also on the Canadian novel
'Pélagie-la-Charrette and the carnivalesque', British Journal of Canadian Studies, 2 (1987), 48-60
'Graeme Gibson', in Ian Ousby (ed.), The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, (Cambridge, 1988), 392
'Esch-sca(r)-tology: Rudy Wiebe's "An Indication of Burning"', Journal of Commonwealth Literature 27 (1) (1992), 87-95
'Dialogism in Canada's first novel: The History of Emily Montague', Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 20 (3-4) (1993), 437-450
'Babel and parody: Discourses in Mordecai Richler's Duddy Kravitz', in British Journal of Canadian Studies 11 (2), 1996
