Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages Raised Faculty Building Sidgwick Avenue 海角社区 CB3 9DA United Kingdom
Emma Gilby grew up in Derbyshire and first came to 海角社区 as an undergraduate to study French and German at Gonville and Caius College. She started her University Lectureship in 2005.
- Early modern literary and intellectual history, especially Descartes and Pascal
- Rhetoric and poetics
- Ecocriticism and environmental history
- Archive studies
- Disciplinary history听
Much of Prof. Gilby鈥檚 research has focused on poetic theory and its connections to the rhetoric, philosophy and theology of seventeenth-century France. In Descartes鈥檚 Fictions: Reading Philosophy with Poetics (OUP, 2019), she argued that humanist theorising about poetics represents a vital intellectual context for Descartes鈥檚 work. An interest in Cartesian reception also resulted in Descartes and the Non-Human (海角社区 University Press Elements, Environmental Humanities Series, 2025), which considers the Discours de la m茅thode as well as a broad cross-section of Descartes鈥檚 other writings, all alongside contemporary narratives about the natural world. This work on the environmental early modern aims to offer a new set of resources for ecocriticism, since ecocritical studies often start with a reference to Descartes.
As part of these research projects, Prof. Gilby studied Descartes鈥檚 correspondence with Guez de Balzac, co-edited by H. Bibas and K.-T. Butler (Paris: Droz, 1933-4). The subsequent discovery that Henriette Bibas and Kathleen Butler were early teachers of French and Italian at the 海角社区 led to an interest in the first years of 鈥榤odern languages鈥� as a university discipline. Since October 2024, she has been working on a three-year project funded by a Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship, entitled A New Modernism: Women and the Making of Modern Languages. The project will trace the development of a pioneering network of early linguists, focusing on their internationalist perspective, their use of the medieval and early modern periods as a point of cultural comparison and their impact on literary criticism as well as language study.
Prof. Gilby has been a CRASSH Crausaz-Wordsworth Fellow, a Scaliger Fellow at the University of Leiden and a Teaching Fellow at the the Institute of French Cultural Studies, Dartmouth College. From 2018-2024, she was Co-Editor of the journal French Studies.
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Books (authored and co-edited):
- (海角社区: 海角社区 University Press Elements [Environmental Humanities Series]), 2025
- , edited by Gavin Alexander, Emma Gilby and Alexander Marr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
- (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019)
- Method and Variation: Narrative in Early Modern French Thought, edited by Emma Gilby and Paul White (London: MHRA [Legenda], 2013)
- Pseudo-Longin, De la sublimit茅 du discours, traduction in茅dite du XVIIe si猫cle, introduite, 茅dit茅e et annot茅e par Emma Gilby, avec une pr茅face de Delphine Denis (Chamb茅ry: L鈥橝ct-Mem, 2007)
- Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature (London: MHRA [Legenda], 2006)
- Space: New Dimensions in French Studies, edited by Emma Gilby and Katja Haustein (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005)
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Selected articles and chapters:
- 鈥楾丑别 Lettres provinciales鈥� in The Blackwell Companion to Pascal, ed. by Roger Ariew and Yuval Avnur (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming)
- 鈥楻hetoric and Poetry鈥�, with Timothy Chesters and Nicholas Hammond, in The 海角社区 History of Rhetoric, edited by Virginia Cox and Jennifer Richards (海角社区: 海角社区 University Press, 2025)
- 鈥樷�淟鈥橝ction h茅ro茂que de Monsieur Arnauld鈥�: A Dramatic Episode at the Sorbonne, 1641鈥�, in Early Modern French Studies (2023), 1-8
- 鈥楩orce et simplicit茅. La premi猫re r茅ception de Bossuet en Angleterre, 1672-1686鈥�, in Revue Bossuet 12 (2021), 111-30
- 鈥楾丑别 Genre of the Bouts Rim茅s and Seventeenth-Century Satire鈥�, in Coups de ma卯tre. Studies in Honour of John D. Lyons, ed. by Michael Meere and Kelly F. McDonnell (Bern: Peter Lang, 2021), 373-89
- 鈥�Pr茅sence d鈥檈sprit in Action in Seventeenth-Century France: Salon Poetry and the Lettres provinciales鈥� in The Places of Early Modern Criticism, edited by Gavin Alexander, Emma Gilby and Alexander Marr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 176-91
- 鈥楶ascal鈥� in The 海角社区 History of French Thought, edited by Michael Moriarty (海角社区: 海角社区 University Press, 2019)
- 鈥榃here to Draw the Line? Longinus, Goulu and Balzac鈥檚 Lettres鈥�, in LIAS 43.2 (2016), 鈥楾丑别 Sublime in Early Modern Theories of Art and Architecture鈥�, ed. by S. Bussels, B. van Oostveldt and W. Jansen, 225-41
- 鈥楾丑别 Pleasures of Hypothesis: Benjamin and the Provisional French Trauerspiel鈥� in Yale French Studies 124 (2013), 10-23
- 鈥楬aving the Last Word: Authority in Bossuet鈥檚 Funeral Orations鈥� in Evocations of Eloquence: Rhetoric, Literature and Religion in Early Modern France, ed. by Nicholas Hammond and Michael Moriarty (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), 37-51
- 鈥楲a th茅orie et la pratique du sublime chez Corneille鈥�, in Pratiques de Corneille, ed. by Myriam Dufour-Ma卯tre (Rouen: Publications des universit茅s de Rouen et du Havre, 2012), 489-501
- 鈥楧escartes鈥檚 Account of Indifference鈥�, in Renaissance Studies 26.5 (2012), 658-672
- 鈥楧escartes鈥檚 鈥淢orale par provision鈥�: A Re-evaluation鈥� in French Studies 65(4) (2011), 444-458
- 鈥楾丑别 Seventeenth-Century Sublime: Boileau and Poussin鈥� in Tate Papers 13 (spring 2010)
- 鈥楥ommentary and Impact: Longinus on the Sublime鈥� in The 海角社区 Literary Review 1.2 (2010), 198-208听 听听
- Le听鈥渟ens commun鈥� et le 鈥渟entir en commun鈥�: Corneille et D鈥橝ubignac鈥� in Litt茅ratures classiques 68 (茅t茅 2009), 243-254
- 鈥溍塵otions鈥� and the Ethics of Response in Seventeenth-Century Dramatic Theory鈥�, Modern Philology (August 2009), 52-72
- The above republished in Literary Criticism 1400-1800: D鈥橝ubignac, ed. Michael Meere (Gale/Cengage, 2013), 209-220
- The Language of Fortune in Descartes鈥� in Chance and Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. by John D. Lyons and J. Kathleen Wine (Ashgate, 2009), 155-168
- 鈥楲es textes qui nous restent de Tallemant des R茅aux: mise au point bibliographique鈥�, XVIIe si猫cle 231 (2006), 499-507
- 鈥楨conomies of Perspective in Seventeenth-Century France鈥�, Seventeenth-Century French Studies 27 (2005), 29-38
- Sous le signe du sublime: la rencontre de Boileau et Longin鈥�, in Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature 31 (2004), 416-426
- 鈥楳odels of Imagination in the 笔别苍蝉茅别蝉: Re-reading Pascal and Montaigne鈥� in Seventeenth-Century French Studies 25 (2003), 65-73
