Victorian Studies in France
It is one thing to say that Victorian Studies are thriving in France. It is quite another to prove it. Perhaps a few facts and figures are necessary. Most French scholars involved in Victorian Studies belong to a society known as the SFEVE (Société Française d'Études Victoriennes et Édouardiennes), to which I have belonged ever since its creation in 1976, and whose chairman I have been since 2001. Of course, there may be a few exceptions, but practically all French Victorianists have chosen to belong to this society. Our two annual conferences (one in January and another in May) give them the opportunity of meeting colleagues and presenting papers, which, after a selection has been made bythe editorial board, are published in Cahiers Victoriens et Édouardiens, a journal printed by Montpellier University Press.
The titles of both our society and our journal show that Victorian Studies in France are closely linked with Edwardian Studies, for we believe that, as far as cultural trends are concerned, there is no clear-cut division between the end of Queen Victoria's reign and the beginning of King Edward VII's. Nor do we start with the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign in 1837. For reasons of historic continuity, we consider the nineteenth century in general, which, for many historians, begins in 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, and ends with the First World War. Recently, we have even accommodated scholars working on Jane Austen and the Regency, which tends to demonstrate that our field is indeed the 'Long Nineteenth Century'.
During much of the remainder of this presentation of 'Victorian Studies in France', which, as I have just shown, could be called, rather, 'Nineteenth-Century Studies in France', I will use the latest list of members of our society (October 2006) as working material.
Our society boasts a total of 191 members, i.e. approximately 8 or 8.5% of all university teachers of English in France.
Junior Members: 117 Senior Members: 33 Retired Members: 35 Foreign Members: 6 Total 191 (male: 76, female: 15)
Most members specialize either in literature or in 'civilization' (or cultural studies), but there is no real borderline between the two fields of research and a few members manage to bridge the gap between the [End Page 292] two. The fact that, when they specify their own particular interests, they often mention several fields accounts for the difference between the total number of members and the number of special interests.
Let us start with literature, which is still more popular than cultural studies, for that is a field that was introduced into the French curriculum more recently (in the 1960s and the 1970s). Here is a list of authors and literary topics mentioned:
Austen: 3 Braddon: 1 Brontë sisters: 10 Browning: 2 Carlyle: 2 Carroll: 3 Chesterton: 1 Collins: 2 Conrad: 3 Dickens: 16 Disraeli: 1 Doyle: 1 Eliot: 10 Forster: 3 Gaskell: 7 Gissing: 2 Hardy: 8 Hopkins: 2 James: 3 Kipling: 4 Vernon Lee: 1 Maugham: 1 Meredith: 1 Moore: 1 Morrison: 1 Newman: 3 Pater: 3 Ruskin: 3 Rutherford: 1 Shaw: 2 Stevenson: 3 Tennyson: 1 Thackeray: 2 Trollope: 6 Wilde: 1 Anglo-Indian literature: 5 Children's literature: 2 Detective novel: 2 Edwardian drama: 1 Edwardian fiction: 2 Fantastic literature: 4 Gothic literature: 1 Imperial literature: 2 Literature and science: 1 Literature of the 90s: 6 Neo-Victorian novel: 2 Scottish literature: 1 Sensation novel: 2 Victorian drama: 1 Victorian poetry: 8 War poets: 1 Women's fiction: 1 Women in literature: 1 Women's poetry: 1
This tabulation shows quite clearly that fiction is more represented than poetry and even more than drama, most probably because of the triumph of the novel in England in the nineteenth century. Amongthe novelists, it comes as no surprise that Dickens is given pride of place. [End Page 293] It should be noted that one Dickens scholar works on 'Dickens on screen', a...
