This website outlines my research interests and publications.
See also Birthing Tales in French medical writings (1500-1650).

Contact email: valerie.worth@trinity.ox.ac.uk

Current research projects:

• Women and translation in early modern France
• The intersection of medical and literary discourses in early modern France
• Female voices in the poetry of Agrippa d'Aubigné

Knowledge Exchange Projects:

• Knowledge Exchange project on Birth Through History with de Partu and the Library of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists London.
• Contributing to article (18/11/2022) by Lisa Lamm, in the (German) National Geographic, on historic and contemporary issues in midwifery.

Recent publications:

• ‘"Or vien doncq en ce monde |Sur tel desir”: Poetic Genres Celebrating Births in Renaissance France, c. 1518‒47’, in The Culture of Celebration in Early Modern Europe. Essays in Honour of Richard Cooper. Edited by Emma Herdman, Lucy Rayfield and Valerie Worth-Stylianou (Cambridge: Legenda, Modern Humanities Research Association, 2024), pp. 57-72.
• 'Ne faire que des filles: une forme de "stérilité" à l’époque de Montaigne?', Montaigne Studies, no. 36 (2024), ‘Montaigne and Gender’, ed. by Gary Ferguson, pp. 113-126.
• 'Les odeurs du monde naturel dans l’œuvre poétique d’Agrippa d’Aubigné' Présence et paradigmes du monde naturel (fin XVIe-début XVIIe siècle), Albineana 34 (2022) – sous la direction de Cécile Huchard – pp. 67-84.
• ‘Le rôle de l’odorat dans les accouchements entre 1500 et 1800 : le nez ou l’outil ?’ in Accompagner l'accouchement d'hier à aujourd'hui. La main ou l'outil ? Sous la direction de Marie-France Morel (Toulouse : Editions érès, 2022).
• ‘Medicine’, in Molière in Context. Edited by Jan Clarke (Cambridge: CUP, 2022), pp. 36-44.
• An annotated translation into English of Agrippa D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques, published with ACMRS Press, Arizona, 2020. See more details here. Review in French Studies, by Professor Richard Scholar. Listen to discussion of how and why I undertook the translation
• My French grammar and language textbook (revised edition 2000) is available now in downloadable PDF format: French: a handbook of grammar, current usage and word power.

Recent reviews:

• Ovid in French: Reception by Women from the Renaissance to the Present. Edited by Helena Taylor and Fiona Cox. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023) In French Studies (July 2024).
• Pierre Leroy, Les Traductrices françaises de la Renaissance: ‘ethos’ et discours paratextuel (1521–1568). (Saint-Étienne: Presses universitaires de Saint-Étienne, 2023). In French Studies (July 2024).
• Véronique Ferrer, L’Amoureuse Rage: Agrippa d’Aubigné poète profane. (Geneva: Droz, 2023). In French Studies, (October 2023).
• Adeline Lionetto and Jean-Charles Monferran (eds.), Fleurs et jardins de poésie. Les anthologies poétiques au XVIe siècle. (Paris: Garnier Classiques, 2021). In H-France Review Vol. 23 (February 2023), No. 27.
• Agrippa d’Aubigné, Œuvres, viii: Poésies politiques, satiriques, ‘poemata’, poésies de Constant d’Aubigné. Édition critique par Jean-Louis Charlet, Béatrice Charlet-Mesdjian et Jean-Raymond Fanlo (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2022). In French Studies (January 2023).