Looking forward to discussing my book tomorrow at the @mfoxford.bsky.social with brilliant colleagues @manymanyplies.bsky.social, @lukeosullivan.bsky.social & Emma Claussen. 12.30-2.00 if you happen to be in Oxford! 💚
Walking through the world with a toddler who waves at every single passer by is a real litmus test of societal morale.
An opening from Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, featuring mirror writing and different diagrams.
Newly restored online: Leonardo da Vinci's Notebook, also known as the Codex Arundel (Arundel MS 263), written in his characteristic mirror-writing with diagrams, drawings, brief texts, and personal notes.
You can consult the entire manuscript online now: searcharchives.bl.uk/catalog/040-...
🫶
AUFLY30 gets you 30% off. If you or someone you know would like to review it, please get in touch!
Happy birthday to Montaigne, and to my book! This product of love and errance, now available @academic.oup.com.
Early modern Frenchies! Oxford Modern Languages/Trinity College is looking for a Departmental Lecturer, a 3 year position to replace me while I'm on secondment my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...
𝘔𝘢𝘥𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘖𝘭𝘰𝘯. A French spirit that reenacts a moment of ‘yck’. Yck was a regular emotion of the 7th century used to express a moment of irredeemable disgust, a cognate of the modern ‘ick’ (OED).
Wikipedia sections of an article. 1: early life and career as a pirate. 2: archbishop of York.
If you're looking for a sign to switch careers: this is the sign.
A detail of a fresco in the Carracci Gallery in the Palazzo Farnes in Rome, showing the goddess Diana with her arms wrapped around the sleeping Endymion
Annibale Carracci, Diana and Endymion, 1597-1602, Fresco, Galleria Farnese (Palazzo Farnese, Rome). Francesco Albani wrote, “When Annibale was alive, I heard him say that he wanted to redo his Diana, observing that it seemed as if she was plucking lice off her beloved Endymion.”
Something we don't talk about enough is Caravaggio's humour.
i know we're all busy but i just overheard a plumber say "parlez-vous français ? non ? you motherfuckers don't even speak french, do you" to a pair of french bulldogs
all this is both foolish and unnecessary
Maybe this is the year I read Moby Dick.
Virgin of the Dry Tree. Tiny, fascinating devotional work by Petrus Christus, whose day was today.
Rosalía could (would?) never.
Italy in 2025? Opening up the literature supplement of a major newspaper to find an 'interview' from heaven with the recently canonised millennial saint, San Carlo Acutis, entirely written by AI.
Ready to start a movement that argues universities should spend money on their core functions, rather than flashy nonsense. Such as teaching and research for example.
New analysis of the Turin Strike Papyrus—a detailed account from 1157 BCE—shows how artisans building the royal tombs at Deir el-Medina staged a coordinated walkout after going 18 days without grain rations. tinyurl.com/29822yb2
#ShareGoodNewsToo
Nothing like compiling your index to find out what your book is actually about. So far, it seems 'ambivalence', 'chance', 'control', 'death' and 'hands'.
'These days, I stress that close reading is not magic. Its power lies in argument: always vulnerable, nothing simpler and yet nothing harder.'
Loved this both tender and sobering defence of close reading:
www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
Fun times to be in Modern Languages.
We're launching a really exciting new MSt in Creative Translation - details here. Oxford has a wealth of brilliant translator energy and I am excited to see what will come out of this. Please forward to likely sorts! www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/news/2025/11...
And yours!
I wrote a book on Montaigne! Here's some proof(s).
A woodcut showing Cupid watching a man and a woman rolling together on the ground at the bottom of a hill, a town in the distance at the top. An empty speech bubble issues from the couple. Source: https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/34937/citation
Early Modern caption competition - literally (c.1680)
Not a student, and not part of SMLC but CSR!
