Email: dennis.duncan@ucl.ac.uk 听 | ![]() |
Education and Experience听
Dennis Duncan studied English at Manchester University, before completing a PhD at Birkbeck in 2011. After teaching at Birkbeck, he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, then Munby Fellow in Bibliography at Cambridge. He joined the department at 香港六合彩 in 2019.
Research Interests
Dennis鈥檚 research interests include book history, translation, and avant-garde literature, particularly French groups like the Oulipo and the Coll猫ge de 鈥橮ataphysique.
His most recent book,听 (Penguin, 2021)听was named as one of the books of the year by TIME听magazine, the听New York Times, the听Washington Post, the听New Yorker, the听Financial Times, and听History Today.
Earlier books include (Oxford, 2019) edited with Adam Smyth, which tells the histories of twenty-two paratexts (the parts of a book that not the main text, things like indexes, title pages, errata lists鈥), (Oxford, 2019), and Babel: Adventures in Translation (Bodleian, 2018), a collection of essays to accompany an exhibition of the same name. He has also edited a collection of essays on the novelist Tom McCarthy, as well as editing and translating an edition of the Surrealist little magazine, Le Grand Jeu.
Books
Index, A History of the听(London: Penguin, 2021; New York: W. W. Norton, 2022).
Book Parts, ed. by Dennis Duncan and Adam Smyth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
The Oulipo and Modern Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).
Babel: Adventures in Translation, by Dennis Duncan, Stephen Harrison, Katrin Kohl, and Matthew Reynolds (Oxford: Bodleian Libraries, 2018).
Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays ed. by Dennis Duncan (Canterbury: Gylphi, 2016).
Theory of the Great Game: Writings from Le Grand Jeu (London: Atlas, 2015).
Pataphysical Letters: The Correspondence of Ren茅 Daumal and Julien Torma (London: Atlas, 2012).
Articles and Chapters in Books
鈥楲ess than Paper-Thin: Pseudotranslation, Absent Fathers, and Harry Mathews鈥檚 Armenian Papers鈥, in Matthew Reynolds (ed.), Prismatic Translation (Oxford: Legenda, 2019), pp. 339-51.
鈥楾he Protean Ptyx: Nonsense, Non-Translation and Word Magic in Mallarm茅鈥檚 鈥淪onnet en -yx鈥濃, in John Nash and Jason Harding (eds), Modernism and Non-Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 34-48.
鈥業ntroductions鈥 and 鈥業ndexes鈥 in Book Parts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 1-10, 263-74.
鈥樷淒ebabelization鈥: Creating a Universal Language鈥 and 鈥楾he Fragility of Languages鈥, in Babel: Adventures in Translation (Oxford: Bodleian Libraries, 2018), pp. 34-57, 152-65.
(as translator) Boris Vian, 鈥楲etters to the Coll猫ge de 鈥橮ataphysique鈥, LIP: Journal of the London Institute of 鈥橮ataphysics, 14 (2018): 36-62.
鈥楢c茅phale鈥, 鈥楥oll猫ge de Sociologie鈥, 鈥極ulipo鈥, and 鈥樷橮ataphysics鈥, in Vassiliki Kolocotroni and Olga Taxidou (eds), The Edinburgh Dictionary of Modernism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018), pp. 9-10, 73-74, 281-2, 284-5.
(as translator) Michel Foucault,听鈥楽even Remarks on the Seventh Angel鈥, PMLA, 132.5 (2017): 1251-62.
鈥楾he Compositor鈥檚 Constraint鈥, in G. N. Forester and M. J. Nichols (eds), The Oulipo: Festschrift (Singapore: Verbivoracious, 2017), pp. 262-65.
鈥楥alling All Agents鈥, in Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (Canterbury: Gylphi, 2016), pp. 1-18.
鈥樷淛oyce, un pornographe鈥: Ulysses, Portrait and the Sally Mara Novels of Raymond Queneau鈥, James Joyce Quarterly, 52.2 (2015): 115-32.
鈥楢s If We Were Reading a Good Novel: Fiction and the Index from Richardson to Ballard鈥, The Indexer, 32.1 (2014): 2-11.
鈥楤ackwards and Forwards with the Atomic Priesthood鈥, Alluvium, 2 (2014).
鈥楥alvino, Llull, Lucretius: Two Models of Literary Combinatorics鈥, Comparative Literature, 64.1 (2012): 93-109.
鈥楩orm and Anxiety in Translation: Two Case Studies鈥, PEER English, 5 (2011): 125-37.
(as translator) Ir茅n茅e-Louis Sandomir, 鈥楨xegesis of Mallarm茅鈥檚 Ptyx鈥, LIP: Journal of the London Institute of 鈥橮ataphysics, 4 (2011): 7-17.
(as translator)听Alfred Jarry, 鈥楩iliger鈥, LIP: Journal of the London Institute of 鈥橮ataphysics, 1 (2010): 41-50.
鈥楿rchin, Coney, Rock Badger: Genus Hopping with the Choirogrullios鈥, Dandelion, 1 (2010).
Reviews
鈥Translating Constrained Literature/Traduire la litt茅rature 脿 contraintes鈥, Translation Studies, 11.3 (2018).
鈥Cheap Modernism鈥, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 112.3 (2018): 405-8.
鈥What is the History of the Book?鈥, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 28 (2018): 78-79.
鈥The Death of the Book鈥, Modernist Cultures, 13.1 (2018): 137-40.
鈥Modern Print Artefacts鈥, Modernism/Modernity, 24.3 (2017): 657-60.
鈥Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury鈥, Comparative Critical Studies, 8.2 (2011): 358-61.
鈥Translation as Stylistic Evolution鈥, Translation and Literature, 20.2 (2011): 266-69.