Dr Olivier Séguin-Brault
Subject: Modern Languages
Department: Modern Languages
Academic position: Senior Demy
Contact
Olivier Séguin-Brault is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Early Modern French at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and Senior Demy at Magdalen College.
He completed both his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Early Modern literature at McGill University (2021), before earning a PhD in Modern Languages from the Université de Tours—Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance, France, and the Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada (2025). 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 (Grand Prix de thèse de la ville de Tours 2025), investigates the manifestations of architecture in Rabelais’s fictionnal and learned writings (1532-1564). His current research, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), 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, includingL’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:
Follow this link for a complete list of publications.
Book Chapters:
- “La cité d’Orbe et le paradigme architectural du templum justitiæ.” In L’ekphrasis architecturale dans la littérature du XVIe siècle en France, edited by Anne-Pascale Pouey-Mounou and Aya Iwashita-Kajiro. Paris: Classiques Garnier, forthcoming.
- “Rabelais dans l’atelier de Le Corbusier.” In Mélanges, edited by Renée-Claude Breitenstein, Claude La Charité and Luc Vaillancourt. Paris: Hermann, forthcoming.
- “Les engins de Pantagruel: une lecture ingénierique des trophées (chap. XXVII).” In Actualité de la recherche sur Rabelais, edited by Romain Menini et al. 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, 2025.
- “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.
Talks:
- “Les engins de Pantagruel: une lecture ingénierique des trophées (chap. XXVII),” Workshop “Journée Rabelais. Actualité de la recherche sur Rabelais”, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 13 December 2025 (Paris, France).
- “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 Conference 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).
