Alain Viala (1947–2021)

Abstract

‘Juste deux ou trois petites remarques’: the smoker’s husky voice, borderline inaudible, yet immediately recognizable, brought warmth, light, and an extraordinary generosity of spirit to the room. Alain Viala, knowing that a seminar is also a kind of rehearsal, would offer, with all the clear-sighted skill of the theatre director, two or three critical notes on the paper he had just heard, a clutch of insightful pointers to take into the next rehearsal, or perhaps through to the stage of publication. His untimely death is a huge loss, not only to the community of early modern French studies in Paris and Oxford, where he taught, inspirationally, for many years, but also to the worlds of research, educational policy, and the theatre, in and between which he moved. His spirit animated these intersecting worlds with an intelligence at once roaming and sharply focused, and with degrees of engaged commitment that served to shape both his own working life and that of the many readers and colleagues, friends and occasional foes with whom he came into creative contact.