Dr Christophe Barnabé

Academic Subject(s): Modern Languages and Joint Schools

Teaching

French language and literature, from the 19th century onwards, especially translation into French, modern poetry, and literary theory. I also run a French poetry creative writing workshop at the Maison Française.

Research

My research focuses on 20th and 21st century literature in French, especially poetry, as well as modern and contemporary writing in Spanish and English from both sides of the Atlantic. I am particularly interested in the study of literary discourse as a means to dismantle traditional dichotomies opposing art and knowledge, magic and science, or rational and irrational modes of thinking. 

My first book, Survivance du charme. Le poème et l’idée de guérison: Jaccottet, Hughes, Gamoneda, Celan (MētisPresses, 2024) studies four European poets whose work spans the second half of the 20th century. Their poetry collectively raises a compelling question: why do these authors, each in their own way, call on poetry’s ancient healing roots at a time when medical science has reached unprecedented efficiency? In search of a cure through language, caught between archaic verbal magic and modern rational thought, these poets’ quest reminds us of the dual meaning contained in the Latin word carmen: at once song and incantation, poem and charm.  

Besides my work in the field of medical humanities, my other research interests include intermedial approaches to modern and contemporary literature, especially through painting and music. I contributed to the Jean Fautrier: matière et lumière exhibition catalogue (Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 2018). Some of my more recent articles concern textual genesis and questions of poetic form, and are grounded in archival work on the manuscripts of contemporary French poets. 

I am currently working on a project on ‘vicarious witnesses’, examining how poets can offer testimony for events they haven’t directly witnessed – questioning, in the context of historical catastrophes, the assumed divide between direct and indirect forms of witnessing.