Research
My main research interests are in the field of nineteenth-century poetry. I have written a book on Corbière, an innovative poet of the 1870s, entitled Tristan Corbière and the Poetics of Irony. I am currently completing a monograph entitled Victor Hugo’s Poetry of Progress: Thinking Dynamism, which reads his vast body of Romantic verse as a visionary response to the temporal crisis triggered by the French Revolution. I study how he introduced a modern consciousness of time into poetry and how his striking depictions of historical change evolved over his lengthy career, both capturing the euphoria of the industrial age and presenting history as a disaster which resists rationalisation. More generally, I am interested in what happens to ideas when they are incorporated into verse, in poetic metaphor, and in poetry by women, especially Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. I have been co-editor of the journal Cahiers Tristan Corbière, published by Garnier. I am a member of the Groupe Hugo and papers I have presented at their seminar are available online.
Teaching
French language and literature, especially nineteenth-century literature. I lecture on Stendhal, Baudelaire, Mallarmé and other nineteenth-century topics. I teach the following Paper XI authors: Stendhal, Flaubert, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Duras. I teach for the following Paper XIIs: ‘French Romanticism: Writing and Revolution’, ‘French Poetry 1870-1918’, ‘Literature and the Visual Arts’.
Graduate Teaching
I teach for the M.St. Special Subject on Nineteenth-Century Poetry. I have supervised graduate research on topics ranging from Romanticism to Decadence, including Desbordes-Valmore, Bertrand, Laforgue, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, and Péladan. I would be glad to supervise projects on a range of nineteenth-century subjects, especially those involving poetry or thought.
Publications
‘Decapitating God: Revolution in Victor Hugo’s Le Livre des Tables and Dieu’, Dix-neuf, Journal of the Society of Dix-neuviémistes, (2024), 82-94. Available to read here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14787318.2024.2354631
‘ “Le Satyre” and the Incorporation of Thought’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 48 (2019), 80-97.
Editor, with Richard Hibbitt, Tristan Corbière, Oysters, nightingales and cooking pots: selected poetry and prose in translation, translated by Christopher Pilling with an introduction by Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe (White Rose University Press, 2018). https://doi.org/10.22599/Corbiere Available to read here: https://universitypress.whiterose.ac.uk/books/m/10.22599/Corbiere
‘Lyric and Memory: Marceline Desbordes-Valmore’s “Tristesse” ’, French Forum, 42 (2017), 217-232.
‘Transformations in Victor Hugo’s Cosmic Poetry’, Dix-Neuf, 20 (2016), 278-90.
French Romantic Poetry’, in Handbook on European Romanticism, ed. by Paul Hamilton (Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 122-139.
'Humanity's Struggle with Nature in Victor Hugo's Poetry of Progress', Modern Language Review, 107 (2012) 143-61
'Changing Constellations in Victor Hugo's Contemplations', in 'When familiar meanings dissolve...': Essays in French Studies in Memory of Malcolm Bowie, ed. by Naomi Segal and Gill Rye (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), 83-96
'Progress as Idea and Image in Victor Hugo's "Force des choses"', Dix-neuf, 13 (2009), 36-54
'Death and the Aesthetic of Continuity: Victor Hugo’s Les Contemplations', French Studies, 62 (2008), 13-25
Tristan Corbière and the Poetics of Irony, Oxford Modern Languages Monographs (Oxford: OUP, 2006)
'"Intérêt et Principal": Nineteenth-Century Borrowings of La Fontaine's "La Cigale et la fourmi"', in: Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France (Bern: Peter Lang, 2005), 89-100
'Paris as Bazaar: Tristan Corbière's Poetry of the City', Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 33 (2004), 120-34
'Voice-Defying Lyricism: Tristan Corbière's "Les Amours jaunes"', French Studies, 56 (2002), 165-78
Papers presented at the Groupe Hugo seminar
‘Métaphore et sensation dans “Le satyre” et “Plein ciel”’. 19 January 2019. Available to read here: https://groupehugo.hypotheses.org/256
‘Le Verso de la page: des images face à la violence historique.’ 23 January 2016. Available to read here: http://groupugo.div.jussieu.fr/Groupugo/16-01-23Lunn-Rockliffe.htm
‘Le Progrès dans la poésie de Hugo’. 24 September 2011. Available to read here: http://groupugo.div.jussieu.fr/Groupugo/11-09-24Lunn-Rockliffe.htm And also on Maisons Victor Hugo website here: https://victorhugoressources.paris.fr/le-progres-dans-la-poesie-de-hugo