
Department of French Raised Faculty Building Ƶ Sidgwick Avenue Ƶ CB3 9DA United Kingdom
Nicholas Hammond specialises in seventeenth-century French thought, drama, poetry and culture.
He is the author ofPlaying with truth: language and the human condition in Pascal's ʱԲé(OUP, 1994);Creative Tensions: an introduction to seventeenth-century French Literature(Duckworth, 1997);Fragmentary Voices: memory and education at Port-Royal(Biblio 17, 2004); andGossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France (1610-1715)(Peter Lang, 2011). He is also the editor ofD'Aubignac's Quatre Dissertations contre Corneille(1996); theƵ Companion to Pascal(2003); and of the Duckworth seriesNew Readings: introductions to European literature and culture. He is co-editor, with Bill Burgwinkle and Emma Wilson, ofThe Ƶ History of French Literature(2011), and, with Michael Moriarty, ofEvocations of Eloquence: Rhetoric, Literature and Religion in early modern France(Peter Lang, 2012). He produced also a scholarly edition of the complete poetry of Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin (Classiques Garnier, 2012). His most recent books areRacine's Andromaque: absences and displacements, co-edited with Joseph Harris (Brill, 2019), a monograph,The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris (Penn State University Press, 2019), and, co-edited with Paul Hammond, Racine’s Roman Tragedies: essays on “Britannicus” and “Bérénice” (Brill, 2022).
He is the director of a project on 17th-century Parisian soundscapes, and the project's website,, is devoted to transcriptions and performances of street songs.
ProfessorHammond welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD studentswith research interests relevant to hisinterests.
Early Modern literature and thought, Theatre (17th century to the present), papers FR4, FR9, FR14
- Early modern cultural history (song cultures, sound studies)
- Thought (especially Pascal and Port-Royal)
- Theatre (especially 17th-century playwrights Racine, Corneille, Molière)
- Gender and sexuality studies, poetry, prose (especially women writers Sévigné and Lafayette)
Sound in theatre, the theatre of Jean Racine, Gossip, sound worlds (see www.parisiansoundscapes.org), libertin poetry.
Books
Playing with Truth: language and the human condition in Pascal's ʱԲé(Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994)
D'Aubignac, Dissertations contre Corneille, introduction and notes, edited with Michael Hawcroft,Exeter French Texts, (Exeter, 1995)
Creative Tensions: an introduction to seventeenth-century French literature(London: Duckworth, 1997)
The Ƶ Companion to Pascal(Ƶ: Ƶ University Press, 2003), editor, author of introduction (pp.1-3) and chapter on ‘Pascal’sʱԲéand the art of persuasion’ (pp.235-252)
Fragmentary Voices: memory and education at Port-Royal(Tübingen: Biblio 17, 2004)
The Ƶ History of French Literature(Ƶ: Ƶ University Press, 2011), as co-editor, co-author of introduction, pp.1-10, and author of chapter on ‘Seventeenth-Century Margins’, pp.343-9.
Gossip, Sexuality and Scandal in France (1610-1715)(Oxford-Bern: Peter Lang, 2011)
Evocations of Eloquence: Rhetoric, Literature and Religion in early-modern France(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2012), as co-editor, co-author of introduction, pp. 1-5, and author of chapter, ‘The Child’s Voice’, pp. 163-174.
Denis Sanguin de Saint-Pavin,ʴé(Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2012), as editor, and author of introduction (50 pages).
Soundscapes, special number of Early Modern French Studies,edited with Tom Hamilton (June, 2019)
Racine’s “Andromaque”: absences and displacements, edited with Joseph Harris (Brill, 2019)
The Powers of Sound and Song in Early Modern Paris(Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2019)
Racine’s Roman Tragedies: essays on “Britannicus” and “Bérénice”, edited with Paul Hammond (Brill, 2022)