Dr Bradley Stephens
Telephone: 0117 9287914
Fax: +44 (0)117 3318010
E-Mail: bradley.stephens@bristol.ac.uk
Room 2.61, Top Floor, 19 Woodland Rd
Bradley Stephens completed his Ph.D at the University of Cambridge in 2005, shortly before joining the School of Modern Languages in Bristol as a Lecturer in French. He currently sits on the executive committees of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, and the UK Sartre Society. He also sits on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Sartre Studies International and The Journal for European Studies. Within the University, he is the Year Abroad Officer for the School of Modern Languages.
Research Interests
Dr. Stephens's research focuses on cultures of engagement in modern France, in particular the influences and legacies of French Romanticism during and since the nineteenth century. Recent work has explored previously overlooked connections between the literary giants Victor Hugo and Jean-Paul Sartre. This forms the basis of a book entitled Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty that he completed during a period of research leave in 2008/09, and for which he was awarded a University Research Fellowship. This title was published by Legenda in May 2011.
Two new projects are currently in preparation, both of which relate to the theme of 'reception' as regards French Romanticism. The first concentrates on the influence of the French Romantics within the wider European history of ideas, in particular on the masculine figure of the grand homme or 'great man' in modern French literature which arguably emerges from that movement. The second considers the question of adaptations, and how adaptive strategies vary across era, nation, and medium with regard to classic French Romantic works such as Les Mìsérables.
Book Publications
- Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty (Oxford: Legenda, 2011)
- Transmissions: Essays in French Literature, Thought, and Cinema (co-edited with Isabelle McNeill). Bern: Peter Lang, 2007.
Journal Articles and Book Chapters
'Dialogue culturel entre l'imaginaire hugolien et Gotham City: image, texte, résonances' in Stéphanie Boulard (ed.), Ego Hugo, ou comment réinventer l'acte de penser et d'écrire, Special Edition of Revue des Sciences Humaines, May / June 2011, 1-16.- ‘Introduction’ to Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, tr. by Walter J. Cobb, with an afterword by Graham Robb (New York: Signet Classics / Penguin USA, 2010).
- ‘État présent – Victor Hugo’, French Studies, 63: 1 (2009), 66-74.
- ‘Baisez-moi belle Juju! Victor Hugo and the Joy of his Juliette’ in Timothy Unwin and Susan Harrow (eds.), ‘Joie de Vivre’ in French Literature and Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), pp. 211-24.
- ‘A Surreptitious Romantic? Reading Sartre alongside Victor Hugo’ in Benedict O’Donohoe & Roy Elveton (eds.), Sartre’s Second Century (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 123-41.
- ‘Jean-Paul Sartre, John Steinbeck, and the Liability of Liberty in the Post-War Period’, Journal of European Studies: Special Edition – ‘Changing Perspectives: France and America during the Cold War’, 38 (2), June 2008, 177-192.
- ‘Victor Hugo, Charles Renouvier, and the Empowerment of the Poet-Philosopher’, Dix-Neuf, 9 (October 2007), 1-16.
- ‘Reading Walter Benjamin’s Concept of the Ruin in Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris’, French Studies, 61: 2 (2007), 155-66.
- ‘Victor Hugo 1802-85’, The Literary Encyclopedia Online, 2007.
Dr. Stephens has also published reviews for well over a dozen books in French Studies, Sartre Studies International, Modern Language Review, and Modern & Contemporary France.
Teaching
Dr. Stephens’s undergraduate teaching at Bristol includes: fourth-year language (FREN30001); the first-year ‘Introduction to Literature’ unit (FREN10025/6); second-year courses on the French novel both pre- and post-1900 (FREN20023/39), and two final-year special options – one on Victor Hugo (FREN30102), and another on representations of the body in modern French literature and film (FREN30094).
At graduate level, he convenes a core unit entitled ‘European Literature of Ideas’ (MODLM2044) for the MA in Modern Languages and European Literatures, and contributes seminars to both ‘The Rise of the Nineteenth-Century Novel’ and ‘Tradition and Experimentation in Twentieth-Century Fiction’ (MODLM 2034/35). He is currently supervising a M.Phil thesis on the figure of the prêtre amoureux in nineteenth-century French literature, and has previously supervised work on Hugo, Balzac, and Cocteau.
Consultation Times
My Consultation Hours will be on Fridays between 3pm and 5pm. The best way to contact me is via email, although please note that Tuesdays are my ‘Research Days’ and that I will therefore more than likely be out of the office on those days.