Faith E. Beasley

|Professor
Academic Appointments
  • Professor of French

  • Affiliated with WGSS

My work as a scholar and a teacher focused first on resurrecting the works and voices of French women writers primarily from the early modern period, a key period of French and western civilization, and putting these works and voices in dialogue with those of their contemporaries and situating them in their literary and historical context.  I then moved to interrogating the effect women's actions had on the cultural field in general, and to analyzing how and why the historical record has been constructed to erase this influence.  Currently my work interrogates France's engagement with the world, in particular India, during the early modern period.  In my most recent book, Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal:  François Bernier, Marguerite de La Sablière, and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France,  I examine the effect early encounters with India had on French literature, culture, and the history of ideas.  I locate the dissemination of the concept of India in salon culture, and explore how one salon served as the focal point for the encounter between France and India during France's Grand Siècle and the effect of this encounter on early Enlightenment thought, material culture, and literature. I am working to revive the conversations of the past, and include these conversations often erased from the official historical record, in order to restore their influence to the history of ideas.   

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Contact

603-646-2406
Dartmouth Hall, Room 213F
HB 6087

Department(s)

French and Italian

Education

  • B.A. Mount Holyoke College
  • MA Princeton University
  • Ph.D. Princeton University

Selected Publications

  • Book:  Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal:  François Bernier, Marguerite de La Sablière and Enlightening Conversations in Seventeenth-Century France. Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2018

  • Book chapter:  "Are the Précieuses only Ridicules?  Molière, Salon Culture, and the Shaping of France's Collective Memory, " in Molière in Context,  ed. Jan Clarke. Cambridge:  Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023, pp. 116-124.

  • Book:  Quand Versailles rencontre le Taj Mahal:  Conversations éclairées sur l'Inde et l'imaginaire français au temps du Roi-Soleil.  Translated by Patrick Graille.New edition and translation for a French public of Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal.  Under contract:  Les Belles Lettres, Paris.  Expected publication early 2024.

     

  • Book chapter:  "Are the Précieuses only Ridicules?  Molière, Salon Culture, and the Shaping of France's Collective Memory, " in Molière in Context,  ed. Jan Clarke. Cambridge:  Cambridge Univ. Press, 2023, pp. 116-124.

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Speaking Engagements

"Feminist Criticism and Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves," recording for the digital bilingual edition of La Princesse de Clèves by Lafayette: A New Translation and Bilingual Pedagogical Edition for the Digital Age, Edited by Hélène E. Bilis, Jean-Vincent Blanchard, David Harrison, and Hélène Visentin, Lever Press 2022.  https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12629286

"Reviving the Conversation:  Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal," Cambridge Early Modern Seminar, Cambridge, February 4, 2022.

Talkback "In Conversation" for Molière in the Park's performance of "pen/man/ship," by Christina Anderson, April 18, 2021

"Fairy Tales:  The Power of Narrative and the Imagination". Duke University, April, 2021

"Textes et Contextes:  Writing Conversation."  "Autour du Livre."  Silver Colloquium, Washington University.  October 16, 2020

"Creating Controversy:  The Provocative Ending of Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves."  Seminar, Duke University, September 2, 2020

"Mythes de Versailles:  Influences indiennes."  Seminar, Yale 11 November 2019.

"Bernier Re-contextualisé: Vers une autre vision de la rencontre entre L'Inde et la France au Grand Siècle" Keynote address for conference "Le Voyage en Inde à l'âge classique."  Univ. Aix Marseille, France, October 18, 2019.

Works In Progress

  • Biography of Marguerite de La Sablière

  • Translation of François Bernier's travels to India