Professor Neil Kenny FBA

Sixteenth and 17th-century literature, culture, and thought in Europe, especially France; the relation of literature & learning to social hierarchy; the role played by language in shaping knowledge and belief

Fellow type: UK Fellow
Year elected: 2011
Subjects: Literature, Modern languages
Sections: Early Modern Languages and Literatures to 1830
Website: http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/kenny

Summary

Professor Kenny's first academic positions were as Frances A. Yates Fellow at the Warburg Institute (1985-1987), Stipendiary Lecturer at New College Oxford (1987-1989), and Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London (1989-1994). He then taught in the Department of French at the University of Cambridge for many years (1994-2012), before going to Oxford.

His main research area is the literature and thought of 16th- and 17th-century France. Professor Kenny has long been interested in how different kinds of knowledge were shaped and communicated by literary forms in general and by language in particular. His work on language first focused on 'concepts' (in particular that of curiosity) and then on 'tenses' (and the attitudes they communicate towards the dead).

His recent and current research is on the relationship of literature and learning to social hierarchy in early modern Europe, especially France. It explores connections between literary and intellectual history on the one hand and social history on the other.

He also works in the field of language policy as a member of various bodies, including the Academy’s Languages Executive Group.

Current post

All Souls College, Oxford Senior Research Fellow

Past appointments

Department of French, University of Cambridge Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader

1994 - 2012

Publications

Literature, Learning, and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern Europe

Published in 2022

Born to Write: Literary Families and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern France

Published in 2020 by Oxford University Press

La Librairie de Montaigne

co-edited by Neil Kenny and Philip Ford - Published in 2012

Death and Tenses: Posthumous Presence in Early Modern France

Neil Kenny - Published in 2015 by Oxford University Press

An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century French Literature and Thought: Other Times, Other Places

Neil Kenny - Published in 2008 by Duckworth

The Uses of Curiosity in Early Modern France and Germany

Neil Kenny - Published in 2004 by Oxford University Press

Curiosity in Early Modern Europe: Word Histories

Neil Kenny - Published in 1998 by O. Harrassowitz

The Palace of Secrets: Béroalde de Verville and Renaissance Conceptions of Knowledge

Neil Kenny - Published in 1991 by Oxford University Press

(ed.) Philosophical Fictions and the French Renaissance

Neil Kenny - Published in 1991 by Warburg Institute

Other Fellows of the British Academy

Professor Melveena McKendrick FBA

Iberian and Latin American Languages and Literatures

Professor John Barrell FBA

English Language and Literature History of a specific country Britain in the 18th & 19th C. History of Art Theory of Painting Cultural Geography

Photo of John Barrell FBA, holding his hat with a blue sky with light clouds behind him, indicating the location of the photo is at high altitude.

Professor Andrew Hadfield FBA

English Literature, especially of the Renaissance (Nashe, Shakespeare and Spenser); Anglo-Irish literary relations; travel and colonial writing; literature and politics; class; national identity; biography

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