Scott Francis is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Chair of the Department of Francophone, Italian, and Germanic studies at the University of Pennsylvania. A scholar of sixteenth-century French literature, culture, and thought, Scott published his first book, Advertising the Self in Renaissance France: Lemaire, Marot, and Rabelais, with the University of Delaware Press in 2019. It describes how printed editions of Lemaire de Belges, Marot, and Rabelais anticipate modern advertising techniques in their use of rhetoric and self-fashioning to represent the author and reader. He is working on a second book project whose goal is to give Marguerite de Navarre and her circle the place they deserve in the history of tolerance. He has published articles on a range of medieval and Renaissance authors and texts, and he is also the founding member of the Marguerite de Navarre Society/Société Marguerite de Navarre, an informal association of scholars from multiple disciplines working on Marguerite, her associates and networks, and the early French Renaissance in general.
Ph.D., Princeton University
M.A., Princeton University
B.A., Cornell University
Medieval and Renaissance French literature and culture
Religion and theology, especially in the Reformation era
Women's writing in the Ancien Régime
Reception of classical antiquity, especially rhetoric and philosophy
Translation
Humor and satire
Print Culture
Speculative fiction
COML/FREN 0090: The Fantastic Voyage from Homer to Science Fiction
COML/FREN 3040/6040: Religious Conflict in France from Past to Present
COML/FREN/GSWS 5460.401: Women’s Writing in French, 1160–1823
FIGS 1000: Seeing Differently: Transcultural Approaches to Francophone, Italian, and Germanic Studies (co-taught with Christina Frei)
FREN 1231: Love and Passion
FREN 1232: The Individual and Society
FREN 3030: Humor and Comedy in French and Francophone Culture (co-taught with Corine Labridy)
“Cross-Dressed Monks in Saints’ Lives and Their Parodies: A Source for Heptaméron 31,” in Subject/Object and Beyond: Women in Early Modern France, ed. Edith Benkov and Nancy Frelick (Toronto: Iter Press, Reflections on Early Modernity/Réflexions sur la première modernité, vol. 1, 2023), 167–88.
“How the Heptaméron Became Erotica,” Marguerite de Navarre: perspectives croisées, ed. Nancy Frelick, Dariusz Krawczyk, and Scott Francis, French Forum 47.2–3 (Winter 2022): 171–215. https://doi.org/10.1353/frf.2022.a914328.
“‘Prenez-le, il a mangé le lard’: Clément Marot’s Poetic Persona and Adiaphorism,” in Représentations de soi à la Renaissance/Representing the Self in the Renaissance, ed. Véronique Ferrer, Eugenio Refini, and Luc Vaillancourt (Paris: Hermann, 2023), 83–102.
“‘Cheminer apres les plus parfaictz’: les pèlerinages et le culte des saints dans les Comédies profanes et l’Heptaméron,” Le Verger, vol. 20 (Jan. 2021): http://cornucopia16.com/blog/2021/01/26/scott-francis-cheminer-apres-les-plus-parfaictz-les-pelerinages-et-le-culte-des-saints-dans-les-comedies-profanes-et-lheptameron/.
Advertising the Self in Renaissance France: Lemaire, Marot, and Rabelais. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, The Early Modern Exchange series, April 2019.
“Anticipating Misogyny: Praesumptio in the Querelle des Amies and the Heptaméron,” French Studies 73.1 (Jan. 2019): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/kny247.
“Scandalous Women or Scandalous Judgment? The Social Perception of Women and the Theology of Scandal in the Heptaméron,” Women in the World and Works of Marguerite de Navarre, ed. Judy Kem, L’Esprit Créateur 57.3 (Fall 2017): 33–45. https://doi.org/10.1353/esp.2017.0027.
“Marguerite de Navarre, a Nicodemite? Adiaphora and Intention in Heptaméron 30, 65, and 72,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 39.3 (Summer 2016): 5–31. https://doi.org/10.33137/rr.v39i3.27719.
Graduate Group Member, Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory
Affiliated Faculty, Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
