Lecturer

l.lyle@ulip.lon.ac.uk

Research Interests

My research focuses on the influence of the life sciences on French literary texts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Current activities include the development of a series of publications from my doctoral thesis, including articles and a self-authored book examining social Darwinist themes in fin de siècle ideological fiction in relation to which I was awarded a British Academy Small Research Grant in March 2008.

I am also organizing a conference on the theme of ‘Génétique et Culture Française’ with Douglas Morrey (Warwick), which will be hosted by the IGRS in London on 2-3 July 2009 (see http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/events/conference/conf_genetique_CFP.htm).

My next major project will consider the further development of ideologies inspired by the life-sciences, focusing on attitudes towards eugenics in French literary text of the interwar and Vichy periods.

Teaching Specialisms

French literature, culture and civilization of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the Belle Époque.

Publications

Books

• Histoires de la Terre, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2008. Co-edited with D. McCallam.
  
• Le Struggleforlife : Social Darwinism in French Ideological Fiction, 1880-1920, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2009.

Articles / chapters

• ‘Charles Darwin dans Le Jardin des supplices’, Cahiers Octave Mirbeau, no. 14, 2007, pp. 47-64.
  
• ‘Maternity and Cultural Reproduction in French Fin de Siècle Fictions’, French Studies Bulletin, no. 104, 2007, pp. 58-61.
  
• ‘Le Struggleforlife: Contesting Balzac through Darwin in Zola, Barrès and Bourget’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, no. 36: 3&4, 2008, pp. 305-19.
  
• 'Science Bourgeoise et Science Prolétarienne: French Literary Responses to the Lysenko Affair', New Readings / New Screenings e-journal, no. 9, Summer 2008, http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/euros/research/journals/newreadings/index.html.
  
• ‘Reading Environmental Apocalypse in J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s Terrestrial Texts’, Histoires de la Terre, Lyle, L. and McCallam, D. (eds), Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2008, pp. 219-34.
  
• ‘Ideology and the Individual in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes’, French Studies Bulletin, 2009.
  
• ‘French Views on Eugenics as seen through Selected Writings of Georges Duhamel’, French Cultural Studies, 2009.
  
• ‘The Evolution of Humanity and the Oppressions of Darwinism in Selected Work of Vercors and Romain Gary’, The Evolution of Literature: Legacies of Darwin in European Fiction, Rodopi,