Sylvaine Guyot

Professor of French Literature, Thought, and Culture,

Academic Degrees

École normale supérieure (Paris); Licence, Classics, Sorbonne; Agrégation in Classics; Master, D.E.A., French Literature, Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle; Ph.D, French Literature and Performance Arts, Paris 3-Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Research Interests:

17th-Century French Literature; Theater and performance practices; Early modern visual culture; History of the body and emotions; Tragedy and the notion of the tragic; Theory and Politics of Theatricality; The Dramatic repertoire; Intersections of critical inquiry and creative practice.

Selected publications

She is the author of Racine ou l’alchimie du tragique (PUF, 2010) and Racine et le corps tragique (PUF, 2014). She has co-edited a special issue of Littératures classiques on L’Œil classique (2013, with T. Conley), a new edition of Racine’s Théâtre complet (Garnier, 2013, with A. Viala), and a forthcoming volume on The Eighteenth-Century French Stage Online (MIT Press, 2018, with J. Ravel). She has published numerous articles on Corneille, the intersections of drama and painting, Louis Marin, the figure of the king in 17th-century tragedy, as well as the development of aesthetics and the neoclassical sublime.

Current projects

  • Les Scénographies de l’éblouissement. Théâtralités et adhésion au XVIIe siècle. Book-length project on éblouissement vs. séduction in early modern visual culture. In preparation (Paris: Classiques Garnier).
  • Comédie-Française Registers Project (MIT, Paris Nanterre, Harvard, Sorbonne), dedicated to the digital capture, transcription, and analysis of the handwritten registers of the Comédie-Française for the years 1680-1793. http://cfregisters.org

 

Performing Arts

  • Co-Founder, La Troupe (Harvard); Le Théâtre de l’Homme qui marche (France).
  • Director, Jean-Luc Lagarce's Juste la fin du monde (Harvard, 2018); Belloy's Le Siège de Calais (Harvard, 2017); Laurent Gaudé's Cris (Harvard, 2017); Wajdi Mouawad’s Incendies (Harvard, 2014); Camus’ Les Justes (Boston-Harvard-Cornell, 2013), Corneille’s L’Illusion comique (Harvard, 2011); Ionesco’s Macbett (Harvard-NYC, 2010).
  • Co-Director, Racine’s Andromaque (Paris, 2006), Heiner Müller’s Hamlet-machine (Paris-Festival d'Avignon, 2009-10).
  • Board Member, French Theatrical Foundation (Boston).