Contact Details

Professor Malcolm Cook
	Emeritus Professor of French
	Department(s): Modern Languages (French)
	Room: (Queen's Building)
	Telephone: (Internal Ext. )	This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it

Research Specialisms

I work principally on French fiction of the eighteenth century, the culture of the French Revolution, French manuscripts of the eighteenth century and most especially on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre. I have published widely on this author and on his manuscripts and I have studied the reception of his works in the late eighteenth century. I am interested in the ways in which fiction of the eighteenth century provides us with representations of contemporary life and I try to assess the accuracy of that representation by looking at material outside fiction.

I am Director of the Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Correspondence Project, funded by the AHRC, the British Academy ( the project has British Academy Research Project status), the MHRA. The Correspondence is being published by the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford and will form part of the Electronic Enlightenment project, to be distributed worldwide by Oxford University Press. The Bernardin corpus is massive (over 2500 letters) and the edition will radically change our perception of this important figure. In the letters we see Bernardin as an author, of course, but also as a scientist, an administrator, a line manager, a husband and father and an individual fighting for the literary rights of his fellow authors. The correspondence will interest a wide variety of readers: specialists of the French Enlightenment, of course, but also those interested in the history of science, the politics of the French Revolution, social history and even art history.

Current Research Projects

I am working principally on the Bernardin correspondence, editing letters and checking letters prepared by other members of the editorial team. The Bernardin project is the first ‘born-digital' project forming part of the Electronic Enlightenment. My longer term plans involve preparing a critical inventory of the entire collection of Bernardin manuscripts in the Bibliothèque municipale du Havre.

Publications

Publications in Print

Authored Book

• Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a life of culture (Oxford: Legenda, 2006), 182 pp. ISBN 1 900755 81 5 / 978-1-900755-81-8

Edited Books

• Ré-écritures, 1700-1820, ed. by Malcolm Cook and Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval (French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 4), (Berne: Peter Lang, 2002), 298 pp. ISBN 3-906758-30-3
• Critique, Critiques au 18e siècle, ed. by Malcolm Cook and Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval (French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 22),  (Berne: Peter Lang, 2006), 308 pp. ISBN 3-03910-537-X

Chapters in Books (since 2001)

• ‘La critique de la religion dans le roman révolutionnaire: l'exemple de Louvet de Couvray, Émilie de Varmont ou le divorce nécessaire et les amours du curé Sévin (1791)', in Roman et Religion en France (1713-1866), ed. by Jacques Wagner (Paris: Champion, 2002), pp. 171-76.
• ‘Fictions utopiques révolutionnaires', in Utopies, ed. by Michèle Riot-Sarcey, Thomas Bouchet, Antoine Picon (Paris: Larousse, 2002), pp. 97-98.
• ‘Le roman à l'époque révolutionnaire: évolution ou révolution?' in La Fiction en prose, 1760-1820 dans les littératures de l'Europe occidentale, centrale et orientale, ed. by Hana Voisine-Jechova (Paris: l'Harmattan, 2003), pp. 221-30.
• ‘Les Veillées du Couvent de Mercier de Compiègne: une parodie du roman pastoral', in Séries parodiques au siècle des Lumières, ed. by S. Menant and D. Quéro (Lettres françaises) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Sorbonne, 2004), pp. 369-76.
• ‘Philosophy and Method in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie', in The Enterprise of Enlightenment, ed. by Terry Pratt and David McCallam (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 95-113.
• ‘La représentation du mâle dans la fiction de la fin du XVIIIe siècle: quelques axes de réflexion', in Le Mâle en France, 1715-1830: représentations de la masculinité, ed. by Katherine Astbury and Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval (French Studies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, 15) (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 235-40.
• ‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre parle de son roman', in L'Art de la préface au siècle des lumières, ed. by Ioana Galleron (Collections « Interférences ») (Rennes: Presses universitaires, 2007), pp. 91-100.
• ‘Histoire ou Fiction? Les Amours et aventures d'un émigré', in Destins romanesques de l'émigration, ed. by Claire Jacquier, Florence Lotterie et Catriona Seth (L'Esprit des Lettres) (Paris: Desjonquères, 2007), pp. 181-87.
• ‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's English Contacts during the French Revolution', in British-French Exchanges in the Eighteenth Century, ed. by Kathleen Hardesty Doig and Dorothy Medlin (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 4-18.

Articles in Refereed Journals (since 2001)

• 'La Fiction courte en France, 1790-1800', Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 13 (2001), 197-211.
• 'Le Voyage autour de ma chambre by Xavier de Maistre', Australian Journal of French Studies, 38 (2001), 158-65.
• ‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, poète', Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, (2003), 169-79.
• ‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: the Ideal Primary School', French Studies Bulletin, 92 (2004), 2-4.
• ‘Writing for Charity: Mme de Genlis and Thérésina', Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 17 (2005), 537-50.
• ‘The Modern Language Review: The First Hundred Years', The Modern Language Review, 100 (Supplement, 2005), 1-4.
• ‘Utopian Fiction of the French Revolution', Nottingham French Studies, 45 (2006), 104-113.
• ‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and Girodet: illustrating the "luxury" edition of Paul et Virginie', The Modern Language Review 102 (2007), 975-89.

Scholarly Edition

• 'The Bernardin de Saint-Pierre Correspondence'.  Published online by the Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 2007.  http://www.e-enlightenment.org/eeBornDigital/eeBSP_e.php

Conferences

Conference Organisation

• Critique, Critiques au 18e siècle, University of Exeter, September 2004.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching in 2007-08

• MLF 2037 The Short Story in France, 1760-1820 (Convenor and Teacher)
• MLF 3055 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a life of culture (Convenor and Teacher)

Postgraduate Supervision since 2001

• PhD  on ‘The novels of Pigault-Lebrun', Anne Serfaty,  2000-2003.
• MPhil on ‘The novels of Madame Riccoboni', Evangelina Bournou, 2001-2003.
• MPhil  on ‘Science in the Mémoires secrets',  Jean Luck, part-time, 2002-2005.
• MPhil on ‘A study of family papers from the SW of France', Angela Whitehead, part-time, 2002-2005.
• PhD  on ‘Women's Memoir Writing at the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th  centuries', Madeleine Percival, AHRB funded, 2002-2006.
• PhD on ‘The editorial work of Louis-Aimé Martin, the first editor of the complete works of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre', funded by the AHRC as part of the large Bernardin grant, Stephanie Darrie, 2005-