Completion of long-standing research project: a substantial book entitled: 'Mighty Magic': Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern French Culture.

这项拟议的研究将使我能够完成一本实质性的书，这是对怪物在早期现代(16世纪中期至17世纪末)文化中的位置和意义的长期跨学科调查的结果。我在这个项目上已经工作了一段时间，在英国、美国和欧洲的会议和特邀演讲中探索了它的核心思想；现在是时候完成并出版我的研究了。这本书将标志着对三个主要领域正在进行的辩论的重大干预：法国研究、文艺复兴研究，以及介于诗学、哲学、文化人类学、科学史和政治史之间的混合领域，这三个领域的定义不那么明确，但可能更令人兴奋。我的项目关注的是身份和归属感的变化形态；知识和文化形式的传播，以及现代体验的细节。我正在以这样一种方式来框定这本书，以便让感兴趣的读者--学生、同事和其他人--能够接触到法语学习以外的东西。这本书的重心将毫不羞愧地放在我的专业上。我们的领域令人兴奋。但我也会将我的发现与莎士比亚、意大利语、德语和拉丁语联系起来，以及古代的怪诞故事和图像在那个时期复兴并延续到我们这个时代的方式。这本书的重点是法国文学(而不是政治或宗教历史)，这本书将引导读者通过一系列与那个时期的主要文本和作家的近距离接触，从(大致)C16中期的拉伯雷到C17年末的拉辛。文学在与人类学家所称的对语境的“厚重描述”相关的研究中具有特殊的意义，因此我将把文学写作提供的问题和见解与历史学家关于宗教冲突(这是一个内战和持续叛乱的时代)的问题和见解联系起来，比如哲学和科学(这也是自然历史和‘自然哲学’发生重大变化的时代)。在整个故事中，仙女座菌株被绑在一块岩石上，被怪物祭祀，但被路过的陌生人珀尔修斯拯救，以换取结婚的承诺，充当了一个反复出现的形象、主旋律或主题。但下面更多的仙女座菌株。这本书的书名将是：《强大的魔力：早期法国现代文化中的怪物及其意义》。莎士比亚的《奥赛罗》在被指控使用类似巫术的东西时说，他曾经赢得了苔丝狄蒙娜的心：怪物的强大魔力，既是故事，也是标志。苔丝狄蒙娜(和奥赛罗：英雄和怪物)的故事本身就是对仙女座古老神话(以及珀尔修斯和怪物)的复杂改编。我的研究探索了在早期现代性的新背景下，对古代怪物的其他许多这样的改编、目击和修改。在法国方言的特殊背景下，在C16世纪中期称某物为monstruceux，往往是对其巨大的体量感到惊讶：它让人想起像鲸鱼一样的东西。到了17世纪末，“monstruceux”更有可能是隐藏的意图和未言明的欲望的象征。我的研究将这本词的历史描述为一种旅程，描绘了怪物从自然历史到道德哲学的翻译或迁移，从对外部世界中发现的生物的描述，到人类动机的戏剧性、性、政治和文化身份的戏剧。这本书的结构/章节的大纲可以在这份申请的其他地方找到。我已经为这本书工作了五年多，现在我正在忙着写这本书：今年春天在牛津和伦敦待了一学期后，暑期学期将允许我在巴黎图书馆进行一些最后的研究，并完成这本书。两家出版商-OUP和普林斯顿-表达了对这份手稿的强烈兴趣。

The proposed research will allow me to complete a substantial book, the result of a long-standing interdisciplinary investigation into the place and significance of monsters in early modern (mid-C16th to late-C17th) culture. I have been working on this project for some time, exploring its central ideas at conferences and invited lectures in the UK, the US and in Europe; it is now time to complete, and publish my research.The book will mark a significant intervention into ongoing debates in three major fields: French studies, Renaissance studies, and the less distinctly defined -- but potentially all the more exciting -- hybrid territory which lies between poetics, philosophy, cultural anthropology, and histories of science and of politics. My project concerns itself with the changing shapes of identity and belonging; with the transmission of knowledge and cultural forms, and the specifics of modern experience. I am framing the work in such a way as to make it accessible to interested readers -- students, colleagues and others -- beyond French studies.The centre of the book's gravity will, unashamedly, be my specialism. Ours is an exciting field. But I will also be relating my findings to Shakespeare, to Italian, German and Latin, as well as to ways in which the monstrous tales and images of Antiquity were revived across the period, and survive into our own times. The focus is on French literature (rather than political or religious history), and the book will conduct the reader through a series of close encounters with major texts and writers of the period, from (roughly) Rabelais in the mid-C16th through to Racine at the end of the C17th. Literature makes a particular kind of sense when studied in relation to what anthropologists call 'thick descriptions' of context, and so I will be relating the questions and insights offered by literary writing to those produced by historians of religious conflict (this was a time of civil war and persistent rebellion), as of philosophy and science (this was also a time in which natural history and 'natural philosophy' underwent significant change). Throughout, the story of Andromeda, tied to a rock and sacrificed to the monster, but rescued by the passing stranger, Perseus, in exchange for a promise of marriage, acts as a recurrent image, leitmotif, or theme. But more of Andromeda below... The book will be entitled: 'Mighty Magic': Monsters and their Meanings in Early Modern French Culture.'Mighty Magic' is what Shakespeare's Othello, when accused of something like witchcraft, says he used to win the heart of Desdemona: the 'mighty magic' of monsters, as stories and as signs. The story of Desdemona (and Othello: both hero and monster) is itself a complex reworking of the ancient myth of Andromeda (and Perseus and the monster). My study explores a host of other such reworkings, sightings and revisions of ancient monsters in the new contexts of early modernity. In the particular context of the French vernacular, to call something 'monstrueux' in the mid-C16th is, more often than not, to wonder at its enormous size: it is to call to mind something like a whale. By the late-C17th, 'monstrueux' is more likely to be a sign of hidden intentions, unspoken desires. My study narrates this word history as a kind of journey, charting the translation, or migration of the monstrous from natural history to moral philosophy, from descriptions of creatures found in the external world, to the drama of human motivation, of sexual, political and cultural identity.An outline of the book's structure/chapters can be found elsewhere in this application.I have been working on the book for over five years, and am now 'on a roll': After a term in Oxford and London in the spring, the 'AHRC' summer term would allow me both to conduct some final research in Paris libraries, and to complete the book. Two publishers -OUP and Princeton - have expressed strong interest in the manuscript.