THE RICHARD PARISH PRIZE
The Executive Committee has instituted an annual prize of £500 to be awarded to the best article published in Early Modern French Studies during the preceding calendar year. The prize is to be called The Richard Parish Prize, in memory of our previous Chair who did so much to nurture the Society. The prize committee consists of the Chair, the Treasurer, and the Editor of EMFS.
2025
Prize
Julia Prest, ‘Performing Disability in French Court Ballet’
The committee was impressed by the remarkable and ambitious combination of archival scholarship, theoretical dexterity, and performance history in this article, that breaks new ground in the discipline and negotiates with care the ethical questions inherent in early modern representations and contemporary Disability Studies.
Commended
Delphine Calle, ‘“Mon sexe sera mon retranchement”: Villedieu’s Female Gaze in Les Amours des grands hommes’
The committee appreciated this article’s subtle argument combining acute close readings and an appreciation of the risks and rewards of ironic critique.
Suzanne Jones, ‘Tragedy, Pedagogy and Religio-Political Propaganda: David-Augustin de Brueys’s Gabinie (1699)’
The committee commended the meticulous archival literary history in this article, and its deft handling of transcultural change and transformation.
2024
Prize
Rachel Hindmarsh, ‘Dolet, Rabelais, and Paré: Literature and Medicine beyond Dissection’
The prize committee commended the article’s scope and ambition in rethinking the relationship between fiction and case study, offering new ways of thinking about knowledge production and dissemination for early modern studies and for medical humanities.
Commended
Caroline Godard, ‘Being “Time Bound”: Montaigne on Touch, Contagion, and the Contemporary’
The committee appreciated the article’s theoretical scope and ambition, and the ways it engages with both early modern and modern reading practices and theories of the contemporary.
Annalisa Nicholson, ‘The Wordy Milieu of the Mazarin Salon: Queer Anti-Absolutism with Hortense Mancini, Charles de Saint-Evremond, and Jean de la Fontaine’
The committee appreciated the article’s wit and ambitious scope, and how it deftly combines historical detail and a precise theoretical and critical lens, with wide implications for ‘salon studies’ and Franco-English exchange.
2023
Zak Eastop, ‘Undead Dindenault: economics, theatre, and economic theatre in Rabelais’s Quart Livre and beyond’
Melissa Percival, ‘Dare to Wear: performing the prohibition of indiennes on the streets of Paris’
2022
Emma Claussen, ‘Est-ce vivre? The Politics of Living in La Boétie and Montaigne’
Chloé Hogg, ‘The Work of Fans: A Fête galante at Anet’