Staff profile
Professor Marc Schachter
Professor/Director of Studies (French)
Affiliation | Telephone |
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Professor/Director of Studies (French) in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures | +44 (0) 191 33 44344 |
Member of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies |
Biography
My research and teaching have primarily focused on sixteenth-century French literature and culture with the classical tradition and medieval and Renaissance Italian literature as secondary specializations. Diverse concerns and approaches including gender and sexuality studies, queer theory, the cultural politics of translation, reception studies, textual criticism, manuscript circulation and book history shape my scholarship.
My first book, Voluntary Servitude and the Erotics of Friendship: From Classical Antiquity to Early Modern France, focused on the writings, translations, and editorial practices of Étienne de La Boétie, Michel de Montaigne and Marie de Gournay, frequently in dialogue with Foucault on governmentality and the care of the self and Derrida on the gendered politics of friendship. Other publications have considered the textual tradition and early circulation of La Boétie's Servitude volontaire, Renaissance translations of classical works on love and friendship, gender in Italian epic, Marguerite de Navarre on friendship, the reception of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, and medieval and humanist commentaries glossing passages about sex between women in Martial and Juvenal. A current book project reflects further on the role played by the classical tradition in the development of discourses around sex in the early modern period and beyond.
Since arriving at Durham in 2014, I have pursued a series of collaborations. With Dr Laura Campbell, I co-organized a conference on medieval and Renaissance “Franco-Italian Interfaces.” An ongoing project with Professor John O'Brien considering the adaptability of politically volatile texts in the early modern period has resulted in two major publications, La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà and a forthcoming volume on the spread of seditious literature in France and Scotland during the French wars of religion. Another project, with Professor Jennifer Ingleheart of Classics, considers translations of texts from Greek and Roman antiquity and the history of sexuality. With Professor Mark Greengrass, I have edited and annotated two long speeches Jean de La Guesle presented to the Assembly of Notables held at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1583-4. They constitute the centerpiece of a major editorial project bringing together the writings of Jean and his son Jacques coordinated by Professor Sylvie Daubresse (CNRS and the Sorbonne) for which Professor Greengrass and I serve as a secondary authors. Finally, with Dr Danielle Westerhof, the University's Rare Books Librarian, I have been organizing a series of events around special collections pedagogy.
I have been involved in the supervision of MA and PhD dissertations focusing on a range of topics including queer Genet, disability in medieval French and Italian literature, women writers in the French Renaissance, eco-criticism in Shakespearian England, and, currently, queer and non-standard bodies in 17th century French cabaret poetry.
Office hours
By appointment
Research interests
- Early Modern French Literature and Culture
- Early modern seditious literature
- History of the Book
- Medieval and Renaissance Italian Literature
- Sexuality and Gender Studies
- Textual Editing and Commentaries
- The Classical Tradition
- Translation Studies
Publications
Authored book
Chapter in book
- Schachter, M. (2022). Platonic Love in Renaissance Discussions of Friendship. In C. S. O'Brien, & J. Dillon (Eds.), Platonic love from antiquity to the Renaissance (275-288). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108525596.022
- Schachter, M. (2021). The Seditious Pleasures of the Prince in the Reveille-matin’s Denunciation of Tyranny. In J. O'Brien, & M. Schachter (Eds.), Sedition: The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c. 1550-1610 (239-62). Brepols Publishers
- Schachter, M. D. (2019). Boccaccio’s Second Life in French: Anthoine Le Maçon’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron. In M. Eisner, & D. Lummus (Eds.), A Boccaccian Renaissance : essays on the early modern impact of Giovanni Boccaccio and his works (253-278). Notre Dame University Press
- Schachter, M. D. (2019). La copie Folger de la Servitude volontaire: Implications textuelles, contextes politiques, circulation éventuelle. In J. O'Brien, & M. D. Schachter (Eds.), La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà (113-139). Honeré Champion
- O'Brien, J., & Schachter, M. D. (2019). Introduction. In J. O'Brien, & M. D. Schachter (Eds.), La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà (9-59). Honoré Champion
- Schachter, M. D. (2019). Brouillons pour une réfutation de la Servitude volontaire: les notes de Henri de Mesmes dans Bnf fonds français 839. In J. O'Brien, & M. D. Schachter (Eds.), La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà (61-69). Champion
- Schachter, M. (2017). Alcuni anelli mancanti del discorso lesbico: i primi commenti a stampa sopra Giovenale. In U. Grassi, V. Lagioia, & G. P. Romagnani (Eds.), Tribadi, sodomiti, invertite e invertiti, pederasti, femminelle, ermafroditi... per una storia dell’omosessualità, della bisessualità e delle trasgressioni di genere in Italia (29-40). Edizioni ETS
- Schachter, M. (2015). Lesbian Philology in Early Print Commentaries on Juvenal and Martial. In J. Ingleheart (Ed.), Ancient Rome and the construction of modern homosexual identities (38-55). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof%3Aoso/9780199689729.003.0002
- Schachter, M. (2015). Translating Friendship in the Circle of Marguerite de Navarre: Plato’s Lysis and Lucian’s Toxaris. In R. Wilkin, & L. Seifert (Eds.), Men and women making friends in early modern France (99-118). Ashgate Publishing
- Schachter, M. (2013). Some Notes on the Print History of Illustrated Italian Editions of Apuleius' Golden Ass. In M. Israëls, & L. A. Waldman (Eds.), Renaissance studies in honor of Joseph Connors. Volume 2 (463-468). Harvard University Press
- Schachter, M. (2010). The Friendship of the Wicked in Novella 12 of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron. In D. T. Lochman, M. López, & L. Hutson (Eds.), Discourses and representations of friendship in early modern Europe, 1500-1700 (165-180). Ashgate Publishing
- Schachter, M. (2010). 'Quanto concede la Guerra': Epic Masculinity and the Education of Desire in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata. In G. Milligan, & J. Tylus (Eds.), The poetics of masculinity in early modern Italy and Spain (215-241). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
- Schachter, M. (2009). 'Qu'est-ce que la critique': La Boétie, Montaigne, Foucault. In Z. Zalloua (Ed.), Montaigne after theory / Theory after Montaigne (122-141). University of Washington Press
Edited book
- O'Brien, J., & Schachter, M. (Eds.). (2021). Sedition: The Spread of Controversial Literature and Ideas in France and Scotland, c. 1550-1610. Brepols Publishers
- O'Brien, J., & Schachter, M. (Eds.). (2019). La première circulation de la Servitude volontaire en France et au-delà. Honoré Champion
Journal Article
- Schachter, M. (in press). Before Queer: Three Homophile Montaignes in Twentieth-Century America. Montaigne studies, 31, 145-160
- O'Brien, J., & Schachter, M. (2021). La Vive Description de la tyrannie, & des Tyrans (1577): suppléments et découvertes. Montaigne studies, 33, 169-177. https://doi.org/10.15122/isbn.978-2-406-11420-8.p.0169
- Schachter, M. D. (2016). Foucault and La Boétie. Storia del pensiero politico, 5(2), 241-259. https://doi.org/10.4479/84206
- Schachter, M. D. (2015). On Lesbian Acts and Female Pleasures in Juvenal Commentaries from Antiquity to 1500. Renaissance and Reformation, 38(4), 19-40. https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v38i4.26372
- Schachter, M., & Eisner, M. (2009). Libido Sciendi: Apuleius, Boccaccio, and the Study of the History of Sexuality. PMLA, 124(3), 817-837. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2009.124.3.817
- Schachter, M. (2008). Presentation of a Newly Discovered Manuscript of La Boétie's Discours de la Servitude volontaire and Hypotheses on the Datation of the BnF Manuscripts. Montaigne studies, 20(1-2), 185-206
- Schachter, M. (2006). Louis le Roy's Sympose de Platon and Three Other Renaissance Adaptations of Platonic Eros. Renaissance Quarterly, 59(2), 406-439. https://doi.org/10.1353/ren.2008.0331
- Schachter, M. (2001). 'That friendship which possesses the soul': Montaigne Loves La Boétie. Journal of Homosexuality, 41(3-4: Homosexuality in French History and Culture), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v41n03_02
- Schachter, M. (2000). 'Egli s'innamoro del suo valore': Leone, Bradamante and Ruggiero in the 1532 Orlando Furioso. Modern Language Notes, 115(1), 64-79. https://doi.org/10.1353/mln.2000.0011