Matthis Hervieux (LèsL Rouen, MSc Edin)

Tutor in French & Francophone Studies

  • French and Francophone Studies
  • Department of European Languages and Cultures
  • School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures

Contact details

Address

Street

50 George Square
Room 2.40

City
Edinburgh
Post code

Availability

  • Office hour every Wednesday 11am to noon (from Week 1 to Week 11 inclusive, but not including Reading Week/Flexible Learning Week), or by appointment (please email).
    I do not work in June and July.

Biography

Background

I graduated from the University of Rouen, in France, in 2015 with a Licence ès Lettres in Anglophone studies. I joined the French section of the University of Edinburgh immediately after as a Lecteur. I then went to work in the private sector before returning to the University in 2017. In addition to my teaching role, I am currently completing a PhD in Comparative Literature.

Qualifications

2015 - Licence ès Lettres Anglais, Université de Rouen

2018 - Master of Science in Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh

Ongoing - PhD in Comparative Literature, University of Edinburgh

Undergraduate teaching

  • French 1A Language
  • French 1B Oral
  • French 1B Language
  • French 1B Literature & Civilisation
  • French 2 Oral
  • French 2 Language
  • French 2 Literature
  • French Hons. Language Paper 1

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

No

Research summary

  • Encounters between Japan and the Francophone world
  • Exoticism and Japonisme
  • Intermediality
  • Translingualism
  • Inter- and hyper-textuality
  • Literary theory
  • Ethical criticism (Emmanuel Levinas)
  • Eco-criticism
  • French theory
  • Écrivains du corail

Current research interests

My current doctoral research focusses on three French-Speaking writers (Roland Barthes, Michel Butor and Dany Laferrière) and the intermedial aspects of their works on Japan. I seek to examine how these authors engage with Japanese artistic forms (literature, visual arts and theatre) to create their own works, and how this process affects the creation or negation of a possible Japanese "essence", understood in relation to a traditionally reductive or stereotypical japoniste treatment of Japan as a mere aesthetic theme.

Affiliated research centres

Papers delivered

“Michel Butor’s Sentimental Journeys through Japan: Photography and Writing in Tables d’orientation (1993) and Cent instants japonais (2013).” Workshop of the Edinburgh-Meiji Research Partnership, 18 December 2022, Tokyo.

"Intermedial Aspects of Roland Barthes’s Encounter with Bunraku in L’Empire des signes." Inaugural Workshop of the Edinburgh-Meiji Research Partnership: "Intermedial Encounters Between Image, Music and Text With and Beyond Roland Barthes", 16 March 2022, Edinburgh.

"Photography and Identities in Gustave Flaubert, Michel Butor and JMG le Clézio." Doctoral Workshop on “Identité/Identity”, Franco-Scottish Research Network in the Humanities and Social Sciences , 8 November 2019, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. Workshop Presentation.

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