Event Details

In 2020-2021, we explore the global significance of Ruskin’s legacy in our seminar series ‘Ruskin Beyond Britain’.

John Ruskin’s literary and cultural influence in France has been documented through the prism of translation. Contemporary responses have been traced in Proust’s writings and in the works of the architect Viollet-le-Duc.

However, Ruskin’s outlook on France also shaped his ideas and helped him become aware of a number of distinctive cultural features in his own tastes and judgements. Some of the thoughts he developed while in contact with French literature and culture can be traced, on the one hand, to a strongly defined British identity and, on the other, to broader nineteenth-century movements common to Britain and the Continent, and ideas that travelled and adjusted to particular places and languages. Laurence Roussillon-Constanty considers how these interactions and cultural exchanges show in specific French sites and sights.

Professor Laurence Roussillon-Constanty is Professor in English Literature, Art and Epistemology at the Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (France) and a Member of the Research Group ALTER. She is President of the French Victorian Society (SFEVE) and a Companion of the Guild of Saint George. She is the author of Méduse au miroir: Esthétique romantique de Dante Gabriel Rossetti (Grenoble: ELLUG, 2007) and co-editor (with David Clifford) of The Rossettis then and Now: Cosmopolitans in Victorian London (London: Anthem Press, 2003). She also co-authored a translation into French of a selection of texts from John Ruskin's Modern Painters (Pau: PUP, 2006).

Professor Dinah Birch CBE, BA, MA, DPhil, FRSA, FEA is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. She is chair of The Ruskin Advisory Board, and is a Visiting Professor at Lancaster University. Dinah has published widely on Victorian fiction and poetry, as well as on John Ruskin. She served as a member of the Man Booker prize panel in 2012. She is a regular broadcaster and contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and London Review of Books.

This event is part of the 2020-2021 Ruskin Seminar Series, 'Ruskin Beyond Britain'. The series will place Ruskin’s legacy in a global context, featuring presentations from an international community of researchers who are exploring how Ruskin’s ideas have affected societies from Russia to Brazil, from America to Italy, and from France to China. Each seminar will include a presentation and response, followed by questions and discussion with participants. The Ruskin Seminar Series is free, online and open to all. If you would like to join the seminar reading group, email the-ruskin@lancaster.ac.uk.