Alexander Ryan Taylor

Credentials: PhD Candidate in French

Email: artaylor4@wisc.edu

Address:
632 Van Hise Hall

Education

  • M.A. University of Wisconsin – Madison (French)
  • Master 2, Univérsité de Caen (Arts du spectacle)
  • B.A. University of Iowa (French, Cinema Studies)

Research Interests

My research focuses on a genre of the seventeenth-century French comic novel known as the Histoire Comique, including works by authors such as Charles Sorel, Théophile de Viau, Paul Scarron, and Antoine Furetière. In particular, I am investigating the relationship between these novels and the theater as a practice, an institution, and as an object of theoretical and moral debates of the period. My work aims to elucidate not only under-recognized facets of these complex literary objects in themselves, but also how they participate in the evolution of the aesthetics of comedy in the seventeenth century and in the development of the novel as a form.

Dissertation Title

The Histoires Comiques: at the Crossroads of Theater and the Novel

Courses Taught

  • French 101
  • French 102
  • French 204
  • LitTrans 209, Masterpieces of French Literature

Conference Presentations

  • “Homage or Satire? Gauging the status of Hitchcockian stylistic quotations in François Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451” GAFIS Symposium 2021, University of Wisconsin – Madison