Professor Adrian Armstrong

Profile

My research engages with questions like:

• How is literature shaped by its material form, on pages and in books?

• How do images and words interact to make meanings in illustrated books?

• How do poems create meaning through their form as well as their language?

• How do literary translations tackle the challenges of poetic form?

Most of my work lies at the intersection of two or more disciplines: literary studies, visual studies, book history, and translation and adaptation studies. It focuses on literature in French, and interactions between Dutch- and French-speaking cultures in the Low Countries, from around 1400 to 1550. I'm also developing a strand of research on modern (post-1830) Flemish literature. My recent publications explore, among other things, translations of poetry from French into Dutch and vice versa. I'm currently working on a translation of stories by the Flemish author Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883); a Companion to the 15th-century poet François Villon; and an edition of the poetry of Jean Molinet (1435-1507).

I’ve supervised PhD students in a range of areas that reflect my specialisms. Topics for which I’ve been part of a supervisory team include Renaissance Italian art history; 19th-century German literary medievalism; 17th-century English book history; and literary translation in 16th-century Europe, 1970s Malaysia, and contemporary Taiwan.

My contributions to the wider academic community have taken various forms. Within QMUL I’ve served as:
- Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film (2014-17)
- Inaugural Head of the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures (2017)
- Deputy Dean for Research (PGR), Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (2019-20)
- Director of the QMUL Doctoral College (2020)
- Dean for Research, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences (2021-23)

I've also held various roles in the Association of University Professors and Heads of French (now AUPHF+): Executive Committee member (2008-10), Membership Secretary (2010-13), President (2013-16), Acting President (2016-17), and Vice-President (2017-19).

Teaching

As well as supervising final-year dissertations and contributing to language modules and core first-year courses, I have also convened the following modules at QMUL:

COM5020 / FRE5020 / FRE6020 Why Belgium? Identities, Cultures, Narratives

COM507 European Tragedy

FRE505 Women’s Voices in Early French Culture

COM6006 / FRE6006 Narrative in Theory and Practice: Analysing and Creatively Responding to French Literature Through the Ages

SML4200 Men, Women, and Song: Love Poetry in the Middle Ages

COM7210 Translation Studies I: Problems, Theories, Terms

I am a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA), and have mentored a number of successful applicants for HEA Fellowships.

Research

Research Interests:

My interests include: Late medieval literature (French and Dutch); post-1830 Flemish literature; book history; reception studies; translation and adaptation studies; visual culture; scholarly editing; Belgian culture; literary theory.

Selected funded projects:

‘Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France’ (Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), 2005-9)

‘Transcultural Critical Editing: Vernacular Poetry in the Burgundian Netherlands, 1450-1530’ (AHRC, 2012-16)

‘The 1429 Catalan Translation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron: Tracing the Making of a European Classic’ (European Union, Marie Curie Actions, 2013-15)

Current work: Among other ongoing work, I am currently translating Sketches of Antwerp (stories by Hendrik Conscience); writing François Villon: A Companion; and editing the poetry of Jean Molinet (1435-1507)

Professional activities:

Member of the Editorial Board of Queeste: Journal of Medieval Literature in the Low Countries

Member of the Editorial Board of Westfield Medieval Studies

Visiting Appointments

Université de Lausanne, Switzerland; Visiting Researcher, August 2023

Publications

 Authored books and critical editions

• The Virtuoso Circle: Competition, Collaboration and Complexity in Late Medieval French Poetry (Tempe AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012)
• Knowing Poetry: Verse in Medieval France from the Rose to the Rhétoriqueurs, co-authored with Sarah Kay, with the participation of Rebecca Dixon, Miranda Griffin, Sylvia Huot, Francesca Nicholson and Finn Sinclair (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011); translated as Une Muse savante? (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2014)
• Jean Bouchet, Œuvres complètes I : Le Jugement poetic de l’honneur femenin, critical edition (1st publ. Paris: Champion, 2006; reprinted by Classiques Garnier, 2023)
• Jean Lemaire de Belges, 'Epistre du roy à  Hector' et autres pièces de circonstances (1511-1513) / Jean d'Auton, 'Epistre d'Hector au roy', critical edition co-edited with Jennifer Britnell (Paris: Société des Textes Français Modernes, 2000)
• Technique and Technology: Script, Print, and Poetics in France, 1470-1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Edited books

•  The Multilingual Muse: Transcultural Poetics in the Burgundian Netherlands, co-edited with Elsa Strietman (Cambridge: Legenda, 2017)
• Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France, edited by Rebecca Dixon and Finn E. Sinclair, with the participation of Adrian Armstrong, Sylvia Huot, and Sarah Kay (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2008) 

• Book and Text in France, 1400-1600: Poetry on the Page, co-edited with Malcolm Quainton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007) 

• Print and Power in France and England, 1500-1800, co-edited with David Adams (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) 

• 'Text and Image: Studies in the French Illustrated Book from the Middle Ages to the Present Day', vol. 81/3 (1999) of the Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, co-edited with David Adams

Articles and book chapters

• “Le gentil conquerant”, “een lof toe stiere”, “patron de maint mischief”: burying and praising Charles the Bold', Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes (in press)
• ‘Traductions du XVIe siècle’, in Jean Lemaire de Belges, rhétoriqueur de France et de Bourgogne, ed. Adeline Desbois-Ientile, Ellen Delvallée, and Pierre-Gilles Girault (Tours: Presses universitaires François Rabelais; in press)
• 'Des Chroniques de France à la Chronique de Cretin: un prosimètre', Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes (in press)
• ‘Le Royaume contre-attaque: vers, récit et idéologie dans L’Arrest du roy des Rommains de Maximien’, Le Moyen Français, 88-93 (2021-23), 215-32
• ‘Formal Inscriptions of Performance’, co-authored with Cynthia J. Brown, Samuel Mareel and Bart Ramakers, in Performative Literary Culture: Literary Associations and the World of Learning, 1200-1700, ed. Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie Speakman Sutch (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 29-64
• ‘Pervasive Performance in the Work of Jean Molinet’, in Performative Literary Culture: Literary Associations and the World of Learning, 1200-1700, ed. Arjan van Dixhoorn and Susie Speakman Sutch (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 214-21
• ‘Des vêtements qui voyagent bien? Traduisibilité des habits allégoriques, du Parement et triomphe des dames au Triumphe ende ’t palleersel van den vrouwen’, co-authored with Rebecca Dixon, Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes, 42 (2021), 183-98; DOI 10.48611/isbn.978-2-406-12707-9.p.0183
• ‘When Foxes Rove: Jean Bouchet’s Regnars traversant, Basel–Paris–Brussels–Frankfurt–Dresden’, Digital Philology, 10 (2021), 174-98; DOI 10.1353/dph.2021.0022
• ‘Jean Molinet et le visuel’, in Littérature et arts visuels à la Renaissance, ed. Adeline Desbois-Ientile, Luisa Capodieci, Paul-Victor Desarbres, and Adeline Lionetto, Cahiers V. L. Saulnier 38 (Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses, 2021), 17-32
• ‘Molinet imprimé: perspectives éditoriales’, in Les premiers imprimés français et la littérature de Bourgogne (1470-1550), ed. Jean Devaux, Matthieu Marchal and Alexandra Velissariou (Paris: Champion, 2021), 77-87
• ‘Self-Translation in the Northern Renaissance: Jan van der Noot’s French Verse’, Magnificat Cultura i Literatura Medievals, 7 (2020), 211-33; DOI https://doi.org/10.7203/MCLM.7.17177
  
• ‘Maerlant in French (Almost): Language, Verse, and Cultural Traffic in Late Medieval Bruges’, Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes, 40 (2020), 303-21; DOI 10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-11263-1.p.0
• 'Intellectuals and the Nation in Renaissance France: Verse Epitaphs for Louise de Savoie’, in Sodalitas Litteratorum: Studies in memory of Philip Ford, ed. Ingrid A. R. De Smet and Paul White (Geneva: Droz, 2019), 69-84
• ‘Griselda, The Musical? From Le Livre de la vertu du sacrement de mariage to L’Estoire de Griseldis en rimes et par personnages’, in Philippe de Mézières: rhétorique et poétique, ed. Joël Blanchard, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Antoine Calvet (Cahiers d’Humanisme et Renaissance 20, 2019), 227-47
• ‘L2 Editorial Identity Performance: French-Language Publication in Dutch-Speaking Environments in the Burgundian Low Countries’, Le Moyen Français, 81 (2017), 11-40; DOI 10.1484/J.LMFR.5.116463
• ‘Introduction’, in The Multilingual Muse, 1-11
• ‘Théorie et pratique, aller et retour: L’Art de Rhétorique et la poésie de Jean Molinet dans deux recueils manuscrits’, in Les Arts poétiques du XIII^e au XVII^e siècle: Tensions et dialogue entre théorie et pratique, ed. Grégory Ems and Matthieu Minet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017), 79-105
• ‘“Half dicht, half prose gheordineert”: vers et prose de moyen français en moyen néerlandais’, Le Moyen Français, 76-77 (2015), 7-38; DOI 10.1484/J.LMFR.5.111303
• ‘Literary Countermonuments of the Late Middle Ages’, in The Aura of the Word in the Early Age of Print (1450-1600), ed. Jessica Buskirk and Samuel Mareel (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 180-99
• ‘“Imprimé en la ville marchande et renommée d’Anvers”: Antwerp Editions of Jean Molinet’s Poetry’, in Between Stability and Transformation: Textual Traditions in the Medieval Netherlands, ed. by Johan Oosterman, special issue of Queeste, 23.2 (2016), 123-37]
• 'Translating Poetic Capital in Fifteenth-Century Brussels: From Amé de Montgesoie's Pas de la Mort to Colijn Caillieu's Dal sonder Wederkeeren', Queeste, 22 (2015), 47-61 

   

• 'A Curator's Perspective: Communities in Communication, July-December 2014', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 91 (2015), 97-100 

   

• 'Alain Chartier and the Rhétoriqueurs', in A Companion to Alain Chartier, ed. Daisy Delogu, Emma Cayley, and Joan E. McRae (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 303-23 

   

• 'Books on the Bridge: Writing, Printing, and Viral Authority', in Authority in European Book Culture 1400-1600, ed. Pollie Bromilow (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 31-42 

   

• 'Un cimetière bigarré: les épitaphes poétiques de Jean Molinet', in Texte et contre-texte pour la période pré-moderne, ed. Nelly Labère (Bordeaux: Ausonius Editions, 2013), 187-201 

   

• 'The Resistance of Contingency: The Particular, the Irretrievable, and the Law in Villon's Testament', Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes, 25 (2013), 63-74 

   

• 'Boire chez (et avec) Molinet', in Jean Molinet et son temps, ed. Jean Devaux, Estelle Doudet and Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 237-48

• 'Etat présent: Scholarly Editing', French Studies, 67 (2013), 232-40 

   

• 'Le manuscrit Phillipps 3644: un recueil poétique inconnu de la fin du Moyen Age', Scriptorium, 65 (2011), 354-86 

   

• 'Introduction', in Incunabula: The Printing Revolution in Europe 1455-1500; A Guide to Units 65, 66 and 70 of the Microfiche Collection, Printing in French Parts I-III (Andover/Woodbridge CT: Cengage Learning, 2011), 13-43 

   

• 'Vers, prose, technologie: ponctuer L'Art de rhétorique de Jean Molinet, du manuscrit à l'imprimé', in La Ponctuation à la Renaissance, ed. Nathalie Dauvois and Jacques Dürrenmatt (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2011), 57-70 

   

• 'The Emblematic Afterlife of Jean Bouchet: Piracy, Layout, Interpolation', in Le livre demeure: Studies in Book History in Honour of Alison Saunders, ed. Alison Adams and Philip Ford (Geneva: Droz, 2011), 15-36 

   

• 'Printing and Metrical Naturalisation: Jean Molinet's Neuf Preux de Gourmandise', in Essays in Late Medieval French Literature: The Legacy of Jane Taylor, ed. Rebecca Dixon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 143-59 

   

• 'The Shaping of Knowledge in an Anthology of Jean Molinet's Poetry: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College 187:220', Revue d'histoire des textes, nouvelle série, 4 (2009), 215-75 

   

• 'Yearning and Learning: Spaces of Desire in Jean Lemaire de Belges's Concorde des deux langages (1511)', in The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 79-94 

   

• 'Poitiers to Paris: Hélisenne de Crenne rewrites Jean Bouchet', in Writers in Conflict in Sixteenth-Century France: Studies in Honour of Malcolm Quainton, ed. David Foster and Elizabeth Vinestock (Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 2008), 345-62 

   

• 'The Testament of François Villon', in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), 65-76 

   

• 'Is this an ex-parrot? The printed afterlife of Jean Lemaire de Belges' Epîtres de l'Amant vert', Journal de la Renaissance, 5 (2007), 323-36 

   

• 'Reception and interference: reading Jean Molinet's rebus-poems', Word and Image, 23 (2007), 335-46 

   

• 'De l'abstrait à l'abject: Sensualité dans les Triumphes de la noble et amoureuse dame de Jean Bouchet', in Entremetteurs et entremetteuses dans la littérature française et francophone de l'Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Corinne Pierreville (Lyon: CEDIC, 2007), 153-61 

   

• 'Songe, vision, savoir: l'onirique et l'épistémique chez Molinet et Lemaire de Belges', Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, 123 (2007), 50-68 

   

• 'Avatars d'un griffonnage à succès: L'Epitaphe du duc Philippe de Bourgogne de Jean Molinet', Le Moyen Age, 113 (2007), 25-44 

   

• 'Love on the Page: Materiality and Literariness in Jean Bouchet's Amoureux transi and its Avatars', in Book and Text in France, 1400-1600: Poetry on the Page, ed. Adrian Armstrong and Malcolm Quainton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 95-115 

   

• 'Introduction', in Book and Text in France, 1-11 

   

• 'Cosmetic surgery on Gaul: the printed reception of Burgundian writing in France before 1550', in Print and Power in France and England, 1500-1800, ed. Adrian Armstrong and David Adams (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 13-26 

   

• 'Introduction', co-written with David Adams, in Print and Power in France and England, 1-11 

   

• 'The Manuscript Reception of Jean Molinet's Trosne d'Honneur', Medium Aevum, 74 (2005), 311-28 

   

• 'Prosimètre et savoir', in Le Prosimètre à la Renaissance, ed. Nathalie Dauvois, Cahiers V. L. Saulnier 22 (Paris: Editions Rue d'Ulm/Presses de l'Ecole normale supérieure, 2005), 125-42 

   

• 'Semiramis in Grand Rhétoriqueur Writing', in Schooling and Society: The Ordering and Reordering of Knowledge in the Western Middle Ages, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald and Michael Twomey (Leuven: Peeters; 2004), 157-71 

   

• 'Les Femmes et la violence dans le Jugement poetic de l'honneur femenin (1538)', in Jean Bouchet, traverseur des voies périlleuses (1476-1557): Actes du colloque de Poitiers (30-31 août 2001), ed. Jennifer Britnell and Nathalie Dauvois (Paris: Champion, 2003), 209-28 

   

• 'L'active et la passive: deux modèles de vertu féminine dans le Jugement poetic de l'honneur femenin de Jean Bouchet (1538)?' in Female Saints and Sinners: Saintes et Mondaines (France 1450-1650), ed. Jennifer Britnell and Ann Moss (Durham: Durham Modern Languages Series, 2002), 179-95

• 'Versification on the Page in Jean Molinet's Art de Rhétorique: From Aesthetic to Utilitarian', TEXT, 15 (2002), 121-39 

   

• La Plainte du Désiré de Jean Lemaire de Belges: du manuscrit illustré aux marges de l'imprimé', in L'Analisi linguistica e letteraria, 1-2 (anno VIII, 2000): Actes du IIème Colloque international sur la Littérature en Moyen Français (Milan, 8-10 mai 2000), ed. Sergio Cigada, Anna Slerca, Giovanna Bellati, Monica Barsi, 139-56 

   

• 'Paratexte et autorité(s) chez les Grands Rhétoriqueurs', in 'L'écrivain editeur, 1: Du Moyen Age à la fin du XVIIIe siècle',Travaux de Littérature, XIV (2000), 61-89 

   

• 'Dead Man Walking: Remaniements and Recontextualisations of Jean Molinet's Occasional Writing', in Vernacular Literature and Current Affairs in the Early Sixteenth Century: France, England and Scotland, ed. Jennifer Britnell and Richard Britnell (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 80-98 

   

• ''Regardez bien tout au long les hystoires': Illustration and Self-Conscious Writing in Jean Bouchet's Jugement poetic de l'honneur femenin', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 81 (1999), 241-68 

   

• 'François Villon: Rhétoriqueur?' in Villon in Oxford: The Drama of the Text, ed. Michael Freeman and Jane H.M. Taylor (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 51-84 

   

• 'Jean Marot's Rebus-Rondeau: Sense and Space', Le Moyen français, 42 (1998), 19-27 

   

• 'Pattern and Disruption in Formalist Poetry: The Example of Jean Molinet', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 98 (1997), 209-16 

   

• 'Two More Rebus-Poems by Jean Molinet?' Scriptorium, 51 (1997), 76-80 

   

• 'The Practice of Textual Transmission: Jean Molinet's Ressource du Petit Peuple', Forum for Modern Language Studies, 33 (1997), special volume: 'The Practice of Medieval Literature', 270-82 

   

• 'The Deferred Verdict: A Topos in Late-Medieval Poetic Debates?' French Studies Bulletin, 64 (Autumn 1997), 12-14

   

• 'Signing the Frame: The First Edition of Jean Bouchet's Déploration de l'église Militante', Neophilologus, 79 (1995), 397-407 

   

• 'More Manuscript Copies of Jean Bouchet's Verse: Mss. B.N. fr. 2206 and 2231', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, 57 (1995), 89-99

Public engagement and educational publications:

• 'Vignet: Maerlant in het Frans', in Dirk Schoenaers, Theo Hermans, Inger Leemans, Cees Koster, and Ton Naaijkens, Vertalen in de Nederlanden: Een cultuurgeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Boom, 2021), 163-64
• 'Tolerant and Diverse: a Different Picture of the Middle Ages', History Today, 65:7 (July 2015), 3-4; also appears in the magazine's online History Matters section
• 'Chasing the Tale', The European [online magazine]
• ‘The exception anglo-saxonne? Diversity and Viability of French Studies in the UK’, in French Studies in and for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Philippe Lane and Michael Worton (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 27-36
• ‘"Sharing Words": Conversation, collaboration and cultural connections’, co-authored with Diane Whitelegg, LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, January 2005
• ‘HE initiatives with secondary school partners: Multiple strands of activity to benefit us all?’ co-authored with Jocelyn Wyburd, CiLT Higher, 9 (autumn 2004), 14-15

Supervision

I welcome applications from candidates wishing to undertake doctoral research in the following areas:

- Pre-modern literature in French and/or Dutch (up to c.1600)
- Flemish literature post-1830
- Literary translation/adaptation and cross-cultural transmission (especially pre-modern)
- Book history and visual culture (especially pre-modern)

Current PhD students:

Aratrika Choudhury (second supervisor) - ‘Empire and the Illustrated Book: Visual and Textual Authenticity in Bengali and English publications (c. 1887-1920)’

Past PhD students at QMUL:

Lydia Zeldenrust (co-supervisor) - ‘Mutations of an Animal-Human Hybrid Monster: The Western European Mélusine Translations (c.1400-1600)’

Céline Clavel (second supervisor) - ‘Unravelling Punishment: The Representation of Punitive Practices in Golden Age Children’s Literature in France, England and America’

I was a member of the supervisory team for 11 other PhD students before joining QMUL.

Public Engagement

Publications for a general readership

'Vignet: Maerlant in het Frans', in Dirk Schoenaers, Theo Hermans, Inger Leemans, Cees Koster, and Ton Naaijkens, Vertalen in de Nederlanden: Een cultuurgeschiedenis (Amsterdam: Boom, 2021), 163-64

Film, TV, radio and podcasts

Contributions to episodes on 'Les Grands Rhétoriqueurs' for the radio series Les Chemins de la Connaissance, France-Culture, 10-14 May 1993 (available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6mjBnF_RCk)

Newspaper and Magazine Publications and Coverage

• 'Tolerant and Diverse: a Different Picture of the Middle Ages', History Today, 65:7 (July 2015), 3-4; also appears in the magazine's online History Matters section: https://www.historytoday.com/different-picture-middle-ages
• 'Chasing the Tale', The European (online magazine), 13 May 2014. Formerly available at https://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/adrian-armstrong--2/8459-europe-needs-a-new-narrative. The page is no longer available, but an Italian translation remains accessible: ‘Il racconto dell’Europa fra ragione e sentimento’, tr. Francesca Nicola, La Ricerca, 12 (May 2017), 54-55 (also online: http://www.laricerca.loescher.it/societa/1566-il-racconto-dell-europa-fra-ragione-e-sentimento.html )

Exhibition curated

Communities in Communication: Languages and Cultures in the Low Countries, 1450-1530, John Rylands Library, Manchester, July-December 2014

Educational and professional publications

• ‘The exception anglo-saxonne? Diversity and Viability of French Studies in the UK’, in French Studies in and for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Philippe Lane and Michael Worton (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011), 27-36
• “Sharing Words”: Conversation, collaboration and cultural connections’, co-authored with Diane Whitelegg, LLAS Centre for Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies, January 2005 (available online: https://web-archive.southampton.ac.uk/www.llas.ac.uk/resources/paper/2259.html )
• ‘HE initiatives with secondary school partners: Multiple strands of activity to benefit us all?’ co-authored with Jocelyn Wyburd, CiLT Higher, 9 (autumn 2004), 14-15

Contributions to creative work

Translations and linguistic advice for Johannes Ockeghem, Les chansons, Cut Circle, dir. by Jesse Rodin (Musique en Wallonie, MEW1995, 2020)