Assoc ProfessorStephen Schwartz

After completing my PhD on the theoretical and philosophical misuse of the work of Stéphane Mallarmé in 1995, I took up the position at UCD. My main research areas are 19th-century French literature, literature and philosophy, and literary theory with particular interest in questions concerning individualism and aesthetics. I am currently at work on a book entitled How Flaubert Can Ruin Your Life which is both a reading of Flaubert's novels (primarily Madame Bovary and Bouvard et Pécuchet ) and a critique of all views of literature as a means to self-improvement (whether as a form of self-help or as providing evolutionary advantage). I am also the English-language translator of the French philosopher Vincent Descombes. My most recent translation was of his Les Embarras de l'identité (Paris: Gallimard, 2013) and appeared with Harvard University Press as Puzzling Identities in 2016.