Dr Thibaut Maus de Rolley
Lecturer in French Renaissance Studies
Office: 208, 1-4 Malet Place
Tel: 00 44 (0)20 7679 4422 (extension: 34422)
e-mail: t.mausderolley@ucl.ac.uk
Contact hours: Tuesdays 2-4pm; Thursdays 2-4pm.
Research interests:
Renaissance literature and thought; comparative literature (French, Italian, Spanish); narrative fiction; early modern demonology and witchcraft; literature and demonology; travel writing; literature and geography; the early modern imagination of space; history of science.
I currently work on the conceptions and representations of space in early modern demonology, and in particular on the interactions between demonological and geographical knowledge in a period which is both the 'Age of Discovery' and the 'Age of Demonology'.
Elévations, the book drawn from my doctoral work (Geneva: Droz, 2011) deals only partly with the devil. It traces an interdisciplinary 'pre-history' of aerial and cosmic voyages in French and European Renaissance literature, from Ariosto's Orlando furioso (1516-32) to Kepler's Somnium (1609-34), at the cross-roads between narrative fiction (epic poetry, chivalric romance, satire) and learned discourses (in particular cosmography, astronomy and demonology).
Before joining UCL in 2012, I taught in Montreal (Université de Montréal, 2001-02) and Paris (Sorbonne, 2003-07) as a postgraduate teaching assistant, and in Oxford as a Besse Senior Scholar (Worcester College, 2007-10) and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Oriel College, 2010-12).
Teaching
FREN1102 ('Reading French Texts'); FREN2103 ('The Renaissance Period: Love in the Renaissance'); FREN4114 ('Old Worlds, New Worlds: Humanism and Travel Writing'); ELCS6055 ('First Contact: European Encounters with the New World'); ELCS4023 ('Men on the Moon: Cosmic Voyages in the Early Modern Period'); FRENG045 ('Dead Things and Demolition Sites: Cultural, Visual and Historical Representations in France, 1580-1889').
Publications
Books:
Elévations.
L'écriture du voyage aérien à la Renaissance, Geneva, Droz, 'Travaux d'Humanisme et
Renaissance', 2011. [Prix de thèse 2010 de la Chancellerie des Universités de
Paris.] Available here.
(with G. Holtz), eds, Voyager avec le diable: voyages réels, voyages
imaginaires, discours démonologiques (XVe–XVIIe s.), Paris, Presses de
l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008. Available here.
Articles and book chapters:
(with T. Chesters), ‘Le diable et le bibliothécaire: la classification des ouvrages démonologiques dans les catalogues bibliographiques des XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, in F. Lecercle (ed), Les anecdotes démonologiques (XVe-XVIIe siècles) (forthcoming). ‘
'La postérité de l'ascension d'Alexandre dans la fiction narrative de la Renaissance', in C. Jouanno (ed.), Figures d'Alexandre à la Renaissance, Turnhout, Brepols, 2012, 91-112.
'Pacolet chez le démonologue, ou les errances diaboliques du cheval de fust’,
CAMAREN (Cahiers Moyen Âge & Renaissance), n°3 (2010), 213-32.
‘Le Globe et le chevalier: variations sur la méditation cosmographique dans la
fiction chevaleresque de la Renaissance’, in J.-M. Besse, M.-D. Couzinet, F.
Lestringant (eds), Les méditations cosmographiques à la Renaissance,
Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2009, 109-36.
‘Voler avec le diable: démons et voyages célestes au tournant des XVIe et XVIIe
siècles (Faust/Kepler)’, in G. Holtz & T. Maus de Rolley (eds), Voyager
avec le diable: voyages réels, voyages imaginaires, discours démonologiques
(XVe-XVIIe s.), Paris, Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2008, 75-95.
(with G. Holtz), ‘Le diable vagabond’, Introduction to G. Holtz & T. Maus
de Rolley (eds), Voyager avec le diable: voyages réels, voyages imaginaires,
discours démonologiques (XVe–XVIIe s.), Paris, Presses de l’Université
Paris- Sorbonne, 2008, 13-23.
‘La part du diable: Jean Wier et la fabrique de l’illusion diabolique’, in F. Lavocat, P. Kapitaniak and M. Closson (eds), Fictions du diable. Les traités démonologiques de saint Augustin à Léo Taxil, Geneva, Droz, 2007, 109-30.
