Research interests

Christopher Thompson’s main literary and cultural interests centred from the first on the French Romantics, more specially their interest in painting and passion for travel, as well as the varied works of Stendhal. Another area of research and teaching has been French cinema and the unusual history of ethnographic film in France. From 1996 to 2000, he chaired the Comité du film ethnographique and their two annual festivals at the Musée de l’Homme in Paris and he remains active on the executive committee of the Fondation Jean Rouch, of which he is a founding member. At present, he is directing a new multi-volume edition for Classiques Garnier of Stendhal’s Écrits sur l’art sous l’Empire et la Restauration, to appear in 2021.

Main publications

Le Jeu de l’ordre et de la liberté dans « La Chartreuse de Parme », Aran, Éditions du Grand-Chêne, 1982; Slatkine Reprints, 2011.

« Lamiel » fille du feu : essai sur Stendhal et l’énergie, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997.

Walking and the French Romantics: Rousseau to Sand and Hugo, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2003.

French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.

Explorations stendhaliennes : d’Armance à la « Fraternité des arts », Paris, Hermann, 2013.

Ed. Stendhal et l’Angeleterre (with K.G. McWatters), Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 1987.

Ed. L’Autre et le sacré : surréalisme, cinéma, ethnologie, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1995.

Qualifications

BA, PhD (Cambridge)