Samuel Bailey

• Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University
• Email: samuel.w.bailey@dur.ac.uk

My research approaches seventeenth-century French cabaret poetry through the lens of disability studies. I am particularly interested in the works of Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin, Théophile de Viau, Marc-Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant and François Maynard. As a genre, cabaret poetry includes much frank discussion of human embodiment in ways that sharply diverge from classical ideals of beauty to encompass physical deformity, debilitating disease, the disabling effects of old age and the valorisation of conventionally unattractive characteristics. My PhD thesis asks whether these poets’ treatment of non-standard bodies in their work challenges seventeenth-century notions of beauty, masculinity and absolutism. Beyond my thesis, I am particularly interested in feminist thought, queer theory and early modern debates surrounding gender, libertinage and sexuality.

https://cabaretculture.wordpress.com/

Supervisory Team: Dr Thomas Wynn, Modern Languages and Cultures (Durham), Dr Marc Schachter, Modern Languages and Cultures (Durham), Dr Steven Wilson, Arts, English and Languages (QUB).

Start Date: October 2017.