Dr R. Tomlinson
Supernumerary Teaching Fellow in French, St John's College
Email: rowan.tomlinson@sjc.ox.ac.uk
Research
Rowan Tomlinson's main research interests are in the field of early-modern French literature, with a particular focus on the relationship between the formal properties of texts (both prose and poetry) and the representation of knowledge in 16th-century writing. Her doctoral thesis, a study of the function of lists in a wide range of sixteenth-century authors, demonstrated how for writers interested in representing the natural world the list was an active instrument of thought, used in texts not only to order and present existing 'savoir' but as a means of probing and developing knowledge. She is currently turning the thesis into a book. Her next research project is looking at the status of the artisan in vernacular literature of the sixteenth century and in particular its relationship to conceptions of readership. Authors studied include Du Bellay, Ronsard, Palissy, and Montaigne. A further research interest is translation, especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. She has worked on French translations and translators of Pliny the Elder in the period and is the co-organiser of a forthcoming colloquium, 'The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500-1660'. She is also co-convenor of Oxford's Early Modern French Research Seminar.
Teaching
French literature of the 16th and 17th centuries; translation from French to English; cinema. Schools liaison and access: I work in conjunction with St John's Undergraduate Recruitment Officer in liaising with schools and colleges and particularly welcome queries from language students, language teachers, or those involved in the government's Gifted and Talented scheme.