Dr Olivier Séguin-Brault

Olivier Séguin-Brault joined Magdalen College as a Senior Demy in 2025. He is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in French.

He studied Early Modern literature at McGill University at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, before earning a PhD in Modern Languages from the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance and the Université du Québec à Rimouski. His research examines the intersections between literature and visual arts during the Renaissance, with particular attention to the relationship between fiction and architectural knowledge in sixteenth-century culture. 

His thesis, entitled Rabelais “studieux d’architecture”: savoirs architecturaux et culture encyclopédique dans la chronique pantagruéline, investigates the manifestations of architecture in Rabelais’s fictionnal and learned writings (1532-1564). His current research examines Rabelais’s lexicographical work, particularly the Briefve declaration d’aulcunes dictions plus obscures, a glossary appended to some copies of the Quart livre des faicts et dicts heroïques du bon Pantagruel (1552).

Additionally, he serves as managing editor for several academic journals, including L’Année rabelaisienne (Paris, Classiques Garnier), Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme (Toronto, Iter Press), and Aestimatio: Sources and Studies in the History of Science (Baysville, IRCPS).

Selected Publications:

Book Chapters:

• “La cité d’Orbe et le paradigme architectural du templum justitiæ.” In L’ekphrasis architecturale dans la littérature du XVI^e siècle en France, edited by Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou and Aya Iwashita-Kajiro. Paris: Classiques Garnier, forthcoming.
• “‘La main de l’artisan’: bâtisseurs et architectes dans l’entourage de Rabelais (années 1520).” In Rabelais 1523-2023, la genèse poitevine d’un géant, edited by Stéphan Geonget, Myriam Marrache-Gouraud and Romain Menini : 305–25. Geneva: Droz, forthcoming.
• “Rabelais dans l’atelier de Le Corbusier.” In Mélanges, edited by Renée-Claude Breitenstein, Claude La Charité and Luc Vaillancourt. Paris: Hermann, forthcoming.
• “François Rabelais, Pantagruel.” In Agrégation de lettres 2026: tout le programme de littérature française en un volume, edited by Jean-Michel Gouvard: 65–112. Paris: Ellipses, 2025.

Articles:

• “Rabelais inventeur de Villon du Pantagruel au Quart livre,” Études rabelaisiennes (Geneva, Droz), forthcoming.
• “Rabelais et l’atelier de Baldassare Peruzzi (1481-1536),” L’Année rabelaisienne 8 (2024): 207–39.
• “Cité du cœur, cité des arts: Thélème vue par ses illustrateurs,” Textimage 17, online.

Invited Talks:

• “Un topographe dans la cité: Bartolomeo Marliano gromaticien (1534),” Villa Medici, 10 February 2025 (Rome, Italy).
• “En figure exagone: Rabelais et l’atelier de Baldassare Peruzzi,” Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies, 13–15 June 2024, McGill University (Montréal, Canada).
• “Rabelais et les automates: phryzon, oyzon et autres engins à plaisir (Gargantua, chap. XII-XIII)”, 70th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, 21–23 March 2024, Palmer House Hilton (Chicago, USA).