Research Interest
Novels especially those written by women novelists ranging from Aphra Behn to the Brontë sisters have become my primary interest in British literature. The question of sensibility, the combination of the teachings of the Enlightenment with the imaginative sympathy of the late eighteenth century, the relation of women writers to the French Revolution, the Romantic movement and the quest for human rights are the aspects to which my attention has been drawn lately. The literary production in Regency England (1795 - 1832) holds a key position in my research, since during these decades female writings experienced one of its most flourishing periods. I take particular interest in the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment, the modifications it underwent in the works of what we retrospectively call the Romantic period and how it continues to be discussed, refigured and applied in contemporary theories of human society.
French literature has been a considerable part of my reserch particularly during my Master's degree. Close studies of the works of French Romantic Writers such as Alfred de Musset and Stendhal provide another access to the Romantic movement in Europe. A future area to develop is a comparative study of British and French women novelists such as Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Staël and George Sand.
I am currently working on a project that examines the extent to which cosmopolitan thought is integrated in utopian fiction. The project includes works ranging from early traditional utopian fiction to recent feminist science fiction whose utopian character is debatable. The provisional title of the work is “Sharing the Wor(l)d: Cosmopolitanism and Utopian Vision.”