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Email: s.davies@qub.ac.uk

Simon Davies is Professor of Enlightenment Studies.  He pursued his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at the University of Exeter.  After lecturing posts at the Universities of Cardiff and Dundee, he came to Queen's in the later stages of the last millennium.  Here he has remained with the exception of 2002-2003 when he was a visiting Professor of Eighteenth-Century French Studies at a CNRS research centre at the University Stendhal in Grenoble.  From 1999-2003 he was the Secretary-General of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and has been the UK correspondent of the Société française d'étude du dix-huitième siècle since 1995.  He is on the editorial boards of the Complete Works of Voltaire  and SVEC.  He is currently the treasurer of the Association of University Professors and Heads of French (UK and Ireland) and a member of the College of Assessors of the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Research

Simon Davies researches on French literature, comparative literature and the history and dissemination of ideas in the eighteenth century.  He is the founding Director of the interdisciplinary Centre for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen's (www.qub.ac.uk/schools/CentreforEighteenthCenturyStudies). He has published monographs on Paris and the provinces in prose fiction (1982) and Laclos: Les Liaisions dangereuses (1987; second edition 1998).  He has produced many scholarly editions including works by Chamfort (1992), Crébillon fils (1999) and particularly Voltaire (2004, 2006, 2007).  In all he has published, or is actively preparing, over a hundred editions of Voltaire for the period 1760-1778.  He is collaborating on the edition of the Mémoires secrets being produced at the University of Grenoble.  He is  an assistant director of the team producing the AHRC-funded edition of the correspondence of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, a born-digital project which has British Academy Research Project status and which will be incorporated in the Electronic Enlightenment project of the Voltaire Foundation (Oxford).

Postgraduate

Noelle MCCavanna is engaged on a doctoral thesis on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre as part of the AHRC funding mentioned above.  Simon Davies is willing to supervise doctoral research on a wide range areas in French eighteenth-century studies (fiction, theatre, poetry, history of ideas), as well as comparative literature (English and Spanish) and the history of the period. 

Teaching

Undergraduate optional modules:

Year 2: Women in the literature of the Enlightenment

Year 3: Subversive Voices in the Enlightenment

MA modules:

Narrative, Representation, Memory

Autobiography

Recent and forthcoming publications 2001-2008

Forthcoming (2008):

‘Pierre-Michel Hennin, le correspondant le plus fidèle de Bernardin’, in Autour de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: les écrits et les hommes des Lumières à l’Empire, ed. Catriona Seth et Eric Wouters (Presses Universitaires de Rouen)

‘Réflexions sur l’Histoire de Charles X11: biographie et autobiographie’, in Les vies de Voltaire, ed. Christophe Cave et Simon Davies, SVEC 2008:04 (ISBN 9780729409292)

‘Whither/wither France : Voltaire’s view from Ferney’, in Peripheries of the Enlightenment, ed. Richard Butterwick, Simon Davies and Gabriel Sanchez Espinosa, SVEC 2008:01, p.17-27 (ISBN 9780729409261)

Published:

Correspondance de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre ,  (co-editor of a selection of letters) (Oxford 2007).

Scholarly editions, Voltaire, Le Pyrrhonisme de l’histoire in Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol.67 (Oxford 2007), p.241-379; Epître écrite de Constantinople aux frères, 1-9; Les Droits des hommes et les usurpations des autres, ibid., p.135-71; Discours aux confédérés catholiques de Kaminiek en Pologne, ibid., p.173-91; Instruction du gardien des capucins de Raguse à frère Pédiculoso, ibid., p.215-40; Shorter verse of 1768, ibid., p.379-408.

Scholarly editions, Voltaire, Shorter verse of 1772, in Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol.74B (Oxford 2006), p.299-309.

‘The Irish dramatist, Arthur O’Connor and   The Orphan of China’, in L’Image de l’autre au XV111e siècle: vue de l’Asie et de l’Europe, ed. Jochen Schlobach and Hisayasu, Champion 2007, p.255-65; in Japanese version, ( Kyoto , 2006), p.291-307.

‘Poetry reborn’ in The Eighteenth Century now: boundaries and perspectives, ed. Jonathan Mallinson, SVEC 2005:10, p.74-85.

Scholarly editions, Voltaire, Les Lois de Minos, in Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol.73 (Oxford 2004), p.1-191; Le Tocsin des rois, ibid., p.387-411; Epître au roi de Danemark, ibid., p.413-33; Shorter verse of 1771, ibid., p.471-84.

‘Voltaire’s Les Lois de Minos: Text and Context’ in The Enterprise of Enlightenment, ed. T. Pratt and D. McCallum, Peter Lang 2004, p.245-64.

‘Les notes des Lois de Minos: pertinence et impertinence?’ in Les Notes de Voltaire: une écriture polyphonique, ed. Nicholas Cronk et Christiane Mervaud, SVEC 2003:3, p.238-44.

‘Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and the idea of the underprivileged’, in Liberté: Héritage du passé ou Idée des Lumières, ed. Anna Grzeskowiak-Krwawicz and Izabella Zatorska, Collegium Columbinum 2003, p.150-59.

‘On the margin of the periphery: Belfast, the Newsletter and French writers’, in Centre(s) et Périphérie(s), ed. Marie-Christine Skuncke, Champion 2003, p.81-89.

Scholarly edition, Voltaire, Impromptu sur l’aventure tragique d’un jeune homme de Lyon, in Les Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, vol.56A (Oxford 2001), p.541-43.