Background and Research Interests:

Robert Vilain studied German and French at the Universities of Oxford and Bonn and completed a DPhil in comparative literature in Oxford in 1994. After a year lecturing at the University of Manchester, he joined Royal Holloway in 1992. With Dr Judith Beniston of University College London, he edits the new series of Austrian Studies, a refereed international journal.

From October 2003 to September 2006, Professor Vilain was the holder of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. In 2004 he also held a Fellowship at the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris. Professor Vilain is also Lecturer in German at Christ Church, Oxford, where he is responsible for the College's undergraduate German teaching. His research interests include:

• 19th- and 20th-century German and Austrian literature; poetry; Modernism; the avant-garde
• comparative literature; Franco-German literary relations
• Hofmannsthal, Yvan and Claire Goll, Rilke,Trakl
• English, French and German crime fiction
• the relations of literature and music

On 1 September 2010 Professor Vilain will take up the Chair of German at the University of Bristol.

Teaching:

• 19th- and 20th-century German and Austrian literature
• Poetry
• German language
• European literature
  

Selected Recent Publications:

• Nach Duino: Studien zu Rainer Maria Rilkes späten Gedichten, ed. with Karen Leeder (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010)
• The Cambridge Companion to Rilke, ed. with Karen Leeder (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
• Edinburgh German Yearbook, 1 (2007): Cultural Exchange in German Literature, ed. with Eleoma Joshua
• Austrian Satire and Other Essays, ed. with Judith Beniston (= Austrian Studies, 15, 2007)
• (with Andreas Kramer) Yvan Goll. A Bibliography of the Primary Works , British and Irish Studies in German Language and Literature, 26 (Berne, etc.: Lang, 2006)
• Culture and Politics in Red Vienna, ed. with Judith Beniston (= Austrian Studies, 14, 2006)
• Austria and France, ed. with Judith Beniston (= Austrian Studies, 13, 2005)
• The Austrian Lyric, ed. with Judith Beniston (= Austrian Studies, 12, 2004)
• Hitler's First Victim? Memory and Representation in Post-War Austria, ed. with Judith Beniston (= Austrian Studies, 11, 2003)
• The Poetry of Hugo von Hofmannsthal and French Symbolism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000)
• The Art of Detective Fiction, ed. with Warren Chernaik & Martin Swales (London: Macmillan, 2000)
• Yvan Goll—Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts, ed. with Eric Robertson (Amsterdam, Atlanta GA: Rodopi, 1997)
  
  
• 'Losses in Translation? French and English Versions of Der Schwierige', in The Nameable and the Unnameable: Hofmannsthal's "Der Schwierige": New Approaches, edd. Martin Liebscher and Christophe Fricker (Munich: Iudicium, 2010) [in press]
• 'Tragedy and the Apostle of Beauty: The Early Literary Reception of Oscar Wilde in Germany and Austria', in The Reception of Oscar Wilde in Europe, ed. Stefano-Maria Evangelista (London & New York: Continuum, 2010), pp. 173-88 [in press]
• 'Rilke as Reader', in The Cambridge Companion to Rilke, edd. Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain (CUP, 2010), pp. 131-44
• 'Rilke und Ovid: Ein neuer Blick auf „Sein“ und „Verwandlung“ in den Sonetten an Orpheus', in Nach Duino: Studien zu Rilkes späten Gedichten, edd.Karen Leeder and Robert Vilain (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2010), pp. 43-69
• 'Trakl and Symbolism', in Martin Liebscher, Ben Schofield and Godela Weiss-Sussex (eds), The Racehorse of Genius: Literary and Cultural Comparisons, London German Studies, 12 (Munich: Iudicium, 2009), pp. 83-101
• 'An Englishman Abroad: Literature, Politics and Sex in John Lehmann's Writings on Vienna in the 1930s', in Deborah Holmes and Lisa Silverman (eds), Interwar Vienna (Rochester NY: Camden House, 2009), pp. 246-66.
• 'Images of Optimism? Illustrated Editions of Voltaire’s Candide in the Context of the First World War', Oxford German Studies, 37.2 (2008), 227-56
• '"Maske des Lächelns": Voltaire und der deutsche Expressionismus', in Frankreich und der deutsche Expressionismus / France and German Expressionism, ed. Frank Krause (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2008), pp. 115-40
• 'Thomas Mann: Doktor Faustus', in Peter Hutchinson (ed.), Landmarks in the German Novel (1) (Oxford, etc.: Lang, 2007), 199-217
• 'Hofmannsthal and England', Austrian Studies, 15: Austrian Satire and Other Essays (2007), 130-54
• '"Le style, c'est le diable": Twentieth-Century German Poetry in Dialogue with Paul Valéry', German Life and Letters, 60.3 (2007), 298-314
• 'Hofmannsthal: Der Schwierige', in Peter Hutchinson (ed.), Landmarks in German Comedy (Bern: Lang, 2006), pp. 161-78
• 'The French Connection: Yvan Goll and Georg Kaiser', in Georg Kaiser and Modernity, ed. Frank Krause (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2005), pp. 103-21
• 'Stefan George: Early Works 1890-1895’, in A Companion to the Works of Stefan George, ed. Jens Rieckmann (Columbia: Camden House, 2005), pp. 51-77
• 'Hofmannsthal and Celan', Austrian Studies, 12: The Austrian Lyric (2004), 172-95
• 'The "Pierrot Lunaire" poems by Giraud and Hartleben and Schoenberg’s Selections: Random Collections or Cycles?', Pierrot Lunaire: Albert Giraud, Otto Erich Hartleben, Arnold Schoenberg: Une Collection D'Etudes Musico-Littéraires, edd. Mark Delaere & Jan Herman (Louvain: Peeters, 2004), pp. 127-44
• 'Bringing the Villains to Book: Balzac and Hoffmann as Antecedents of the Modern Detective Story', Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 84.3 (2002), 105-24
• 'The Reception of Walter Pater in Germany and Austria', in Walter Pater: Transparencies of Desire, edited by Laurel Brake et al. (Greensboro: ELT Press, 2002), pp. 63-72