Valerie Worth

After obtaining my BA and DPhil in Modern Languages at Oxford, I took up my first academic post at the Université de Haute-Bretagne (Rennes), followed by the Kathleen Bourne Junior Research Fellowship (St Anne’s College, Oxford) and a three-year Lectureship in French at Trinity College. I went on to hold the posts of Senior Lecturer in French at King’s College London, Professor of French at Oxford Brookes, and Professor of French and Head of the Department of Modern Languages at Exeter University before returning to the Oxford. I have enjoyed teaching extensively at undergraduate and graduate levels, and undertaking research, including holding major national and international research grants. I have also held senior management roles in arts and humanities departments at a time of rapid changes in Higher Education.
 

My main areas of research include: humanism and translation in Renaissance France; medicine in Early Modern Europe; Renaissance French poetry; seventeenth-century French theatre; and the contemporary French language. I am currently working on women and translation in early modern France, and recently completed a project on ‘Birthing Tales in French medical works 1500-1650’. My most recent book is a translation into English of Agrippa d’Aubigné’s epic poem, Les Tragiques (1616). It records the Huguenots’ perspective on the French Wars of Religion, movingly combining depictions of a devastated country, vivid tableaux of the worst atrocities of the Wars, and satirical attacks on leading political and religious figures. I undertook the translation to encourage dialogue between scholars and students of early modern political, social and religious history and of comparative literatures, as well as all readers looking to understand how literature seeks to mediate the pain of partisan struggles. You can find out more about my research on my website.

Over my academic career, I have taught courses on Early Modern French and European literature and cultural history (especially Rabelais, Montaigne, and sixteenth-century poetry), and French language courses at all levels, including final-year courses in contemporary Advanced French Translation and Translation from Early Modern French. My French grammar books have been regularly used by students of Modern Languages. I enjoy working with graduate students at both Masters and doctoral level on areas related to my research interests.

The Culture of Celebration in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honour of Richard Cooper. Edited jointly with Emma Herdman, and Lucy Rayfield (Cambridge: Legenda, MHRA, 2024).

'Ne faire que des filles: une forme de "stérilité" à l’époque de Montaigne?', Montaigne Studies, no. 36 (2024), ‘Montaigne and Gender’, edited by Gary Ferguson.

‘Medicine’, in Molière in Context. Edited by Jan Clarke (Cambridge: CUP, 2022).

Agrippa d’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, translated, annotated and with an introduction by Valerie Worth-Stylianou (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2020)

Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern France. Treatises by caring physicians and surgeons (1581-1625), in the series The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Iter Press, University of Toronto 2013)

Les Traités d’obstétrique en langue française au seuil de la modernité. Des “Divers travaulx” d’Euchaire Rosslin” (1536) à l’ “Apologie” de Louyse Bourgeois sage-femme” (1627) (Geneva, Droz, 2007)

Marie de Gournay, Oeuvres complètes, 2 vol., critical edition, jointly with J-C. Arnould, E. Berriot, C. Blum, A. Franchetti, M-C. Thomine (Paris, Champion, 2002)

French: a handbook of grammar, current usage and word power (London, Cassell, & New York, Macmillan, 1992; London and New York, Cassell, 1993; new edition 2000)

Confidential Strategies: the evolving role of the “confident” in French tragic drama (1635-1677), Travaux du grand siècle XII (Geneva, Droz, 1999)

Practising Translation in Renaissance France: the example of Etienne Dolet (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988)