Professor of Early Modern French Literature

Head of Department

Tel: 0113 343 3483
Fax: 0113 343 3477
Email: r.j.goulbourne@leeds.ac.uk

Biography

Having been educated at Merchant Taylors’ Boys’ School, Crosby, and Keble College, Oxford, I joined the Department as a Lecturer in 2000 and was promoted to a Chair in 2006.

Research

My research focuses on early modern French literature and thought. Most of my publications have been on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French drama, and in particular on Voltaire’s comic theatre: my book, Voltaire Comic Dramatist, was published by the Voltaire Foundation in 2006. I’m also a member of the Editorial Board of the Voltaire Foundation’s Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, for which I’ve edited a number of plays. My current research is on the reception of Horace in eighteenth-century France: I’m looking in particular at how the ancient Roman poet and his texts were appropriated and re-fashioned in a range of eighteenth-century French discourses, including the moral, the philosophical and the political. I’m also interested in literary translation: I’ve published a translation of Diderot’s The Nun in the Oxford World’s Classics series, and I’m now translating Rousseau’s Rêveries du promeneur solitaire for the same series.

Teaching

I teach French language and literature from the seventeenth century to the present day. I’m Course Director of three modules: Culture and Society in Early Modern France (Level 2); Satire, Sedition and Censorship in Early Modern France (Level 3); and Women in Early Modern France (Level 3). I also lecture on three other modules: Introduction to French Studies: Resistance and Desire (Level 1); Foundations of Modern French Thought (Level 2); and The Short Form in French and Francophone Literature (Level 2).

Research supervision

I am happy to supervise research students wishing to work in any aspect of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature and culture. Laura Mackie has recently been awarded her MA for research she conducted under my supervision on the reception of Voltaire’s Candide in eighteenth-century Britain. I am currently supervising Sarah Taylor, who is writing an MA thesis on the images of Voltaire in the French periodical press in the 1760s.

Publications

Book

• Voltaire Comic Dramatist (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006)

Critical editions

• Voltaire, L’Enfant prodigue, ed. J. Dunkley and R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 16 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), pp. 1-234
• Voltaire, La Femme qui a raison, ed. R. Goulbourne and M. Waddicor, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 30A (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), pp. 255-368
• Voltaire, L’Indiscret, ed. J. Dunkley and R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 3A (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), pp. 1-122
• Voltaire, Thérèse, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 28A (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), pp. 21-35
• Voltaire, La Princesse de Navarre, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 28A (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), pp. 83-278
• Voltaire, Le Temple de la gloire, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 28A (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2006), pp. 279-403
• Voltaire, L’Envieux, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 18B (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), pp. 1-96
• Voltaire, Epître à un ministre d’Etat sur l’encouragement des arts, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 18B (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), pp. 431-461
• Voltaire, Questions sur l’Encyclopédie articles ‘Abus’, ‘Abus des mots’, ‘Anatomie’, ‘De l’âne d’or de Machiavel’, ‘Antiquité’, ‘Apocalypse’, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 38 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2007), pp. 59-66, 67-72, 323-329, 361-362, 400-416, 440-448
• Voltaire, Samson, ed. R. Goulbourne, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 18C (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008), pp. 189-328
• Voltaire, Questions sur l’Encyclopédie articles ‘Avarice’, ‘Souverain bien’, ‘Biens d’Eglise’, ‘Bouffon, burlesque’, ‘Cérémonies, titres, prééminence’, in Les Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol. 39 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008), pp. 203-204, 365-366, 367-381, 444-456, 555-568

Edited volume

• Le Théâtre de Voltaire, ed. R. Goulbourne, Œuvres et critiques, 33.2 (2008)

Translation

• Diderot, The Nun, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; reissued 2008)

Articles/chapters

• 'Visual Effects and the Theatrical Illusion in Pierre Corneille’s Early Plays’, Papers in French Seventeenth-Century Literature, 49 (1998), 531-544
• ‘The Sound of Silence… Points de suspension in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal’, Australian Journal of French Studies, 36 (1999), 200-213
• ‘The Eighteenth-Century “querelle des vers” and Jean Du Castre d’Auvigny’s La Tragédie en prose’, SVEC [Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century], 2000:05, 371-410
• ‘Gender Trouble: Identity Games in Voltaire’s La Prude’, SVEC, 2000:08, 195-202
• ‘Diderot et Horace, ou le paradoxe du théâtre moderne’, in N. Cronk (ed.), Etudes sur ‘Le Fils naturel’ et les ‘Entretiens sur le Fils naturel’ de Diderot (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 112-122
• ‘Essai bibliographique’, in N. Cronk (ed.), Etudes sur ‘Le Fils naturel’ et les ‘Entretiens sur le Fils naturel’ de Diderot (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), pp. 181-209
• ‘The Bacchic Sign: Wine in Seventeenth-Century French Comedy’, Cahiers du Dix-septième, 8 (2001), 143-156
• ‘De la mise en scène à la mise en page: les notes dans le théâtre comique de Voltaire’, SVEC, 2003:03, 245-254
• ‘Comédie et altérité: l’Afrique et les Africains dans le théâtre comique du XVIIe siècle’, in A. Baccar (ed.), L’Afrique au XVIIe siècle: mythes et réalités (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2003), pp. 293-308
• ‘Genre littéraire, sexe féminin: les enjeux esthétiques de Cénie de Mme de Graffigny’, SVEC, 2004:12, 26-40
• ‘Voltaire, Pope et la souscription: l’exemple de La Henriade’, Revue Voltaire, 4 (2004), 81-96
• ‘Remembering and Dismembering Racine in the Eighteenth Century’, SVEC, 2005:08, 145-169
• ‘“Cet amalgame est le grand’œuvre”: hybridation dramaturgique dans La Princesse de Navarre de Voltaire’, Revue Voltaire, 6 (2006), 169-177
• ‘Horace au siècle des Lumières: sapere aude et la pré-histoire de la devise kantienne’, SVEC, 2006:12, 167-183
• ‘Satire in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century France’, in R. Quintero (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Satire (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 139-160
• ‘Chain Reactions in the Eighteenth Century: Racine, Marot, Horace’, SVEC, 2007:06, 9-17
• 'La réception des comédies de Voltaire en Angleterre au dix-huitième siècle’, Revue Voltaire, 7 (2007), 21-35
• ‘Voltaire’s Socrates’, in M. Trapp (ed.), Images and Uses of Socrates from Antiquity to the Present (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 229-247
• ‘Intertextes, supplements et strategies rhétoriques dans les Questions sur l’Encyclopédie’, in O. Ferret, G. Goggi and C. Volpilhac-Auger (eds), Copier/coller: écriture et réécriture chez Voltaire (Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2007), pp.191-195
• ‘Voltaire and the Calas Affair in England’, SVEC, 2008:10, 159-170
• ‘Presse périodique et critique dramatique au dix-huitième siècle: le théâtre de Voltaire dans le Journal encyclopédique’, Œuvres et critiques, 33.2 (2008), 85-99
• ‘Voltaire’s Masks: Theatre and Theatricality’, in N. Cronk (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 93-108
• ‘Appropriating Horace in Eighteenth-Century France’, in L. B. T. Houghton and M. Wyke (eds), Perceptions of Horace: A Roman Poet and his Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 256-270
• ‘Espace théâtral, espace politique: La Princesse de Navarre de Voltaire’, in P. Frantz (ed.), Scène, salle et coulisses au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, forthcoming [2010])
• ‘Eighteenth-Century French Comedy’, in W. Burgwinkle, N. Hammond and E. Wilson (eds), The Cambridge History of French Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming [2010])
• ‘The Comedy of National Character: Images of the English in Early Eighteenth-Century French Comedy’, Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, forthcoming [2010]