Staff profile

My research and teaching focus on theatre, spectatorship, libertinage, and crime in early modern French literature and culture.

I am currently writing a book about Marie-Catherine Taperet, also known as Madame Lescombat (1728-1755), who achieved immense and enduring fame as a femme fatale for her part in the murder of her husband. My book explores how her celebrity was mediated in images, plays, novels, and material objects - inlcuding her own emblamed corpse. I also draw on original police archives to reveal the real woman behind the myth.

In February 2024 my monograph Reading drama in eighteenth-century France appeared with Oxford University Press. This is the first account of how plays were read in that period and of the closet drama of the time. The Enlightenment was passionate about theatre in all its forms, and this study draws on a variety of texts – including memoirs, theoretical works, and correspondences – to show that reading plays was a central element of that lively and combative theatrical culture. I propose a framework—at once historically grounded and informed by queer theory—to understand eighteenth-century closeted reading. The book also examines how writers exploited the critical, imaginative, and formal potential of closeted reading by creating plays that exceeded the confines of the playhouse and appealed instead to the reader’s imagination.

My translation of the Marquis de Sade's controversial The 120 Days of Sodom appeared with Penguin Classics in September 2016. This volume is the result of collaboration with Dr Will McMorran (Queen Mary, London). Our translation was awarded the prestigious Scott Moncrieff prize in March 2018.

I have also published a monograph Sade's Theatre: Pleasure, Vision, Masochism, plus editions of Hénault's François II, roi de France and of rare erotic plays. I have edited volumes on the representations of violence in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, eighteenth-century theatre, and Sade's theatre. In addition I have produced numerous critical editions for the Complete Works of Voltaire.

I am happy to receive applications for PhDs on topics in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature and culture.

Authored book

• Wynn, T. (2024). Reading Drama in Eighteenth-Century France. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198895329.001.0001
• Wynn, T. (2007). Sade's Theatre: Pleasure, Vision, Masochism. Voltaire Foundation

Chapter in book

• Wynn, T. (in press). 'Les vertus les plus hautes, les fautes les plus graves': l'affaire Lescombat. In K. Gladu, H. Krief, & M. A. Bernier (Eds.), La vertu féminine, de la cour de Sceaux à la guillotine (233-247). Classiques Garnier
• Wynn, T. (2022). Le crime et la poétique dans le théâtre des Lumières. In S. Marchand, M. Delon, & R. Bret-Vitoz (Eds.), Les Lumières du théâtre. Avec Pierre Frantz (257-264). Classiques Garnier
• Wynn, T. (2020). La Fête de Bellesbat. In Voltaire: Théâtre complet: Tome 1 (541-578). Classiques Garnier
• Wynn, T. (2018). Translation, ethics and obscenity. In J. Kaminski (Ed.), Erotic Literature in Adaptation and Translation (13-32). Legenda. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16km1h6.5
• Wynn, T. (2018). Réponse à M. de La Noue, auteur de la tragédie de Mahomet second. In Complete Works of Voltaire, vol. 78c (165-173). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2017). ‘Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome': art brut, art brutal. In J. Berchtold, & P. Frantz (Eds.), L'Atelier des idées. Pour Michel Delon (549-558). PUPS
• Wynn, T. (2017). La Prude, ou l’homme au franc procédé, comédie, imitée de l’anglais. In N. Cronk, & T. Wynn (Eds.), Micromégas and other texts (1738-1742) (113-304). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T., & Waddicor, M. (2016). Doutes nouveaux sur le testament attribué au cardinal de Richelieu; Arbitrage entre M. de Voltaire et M. de Foncemagne ; A reply to Foncemagne. In C. Cave, & T. Wynn (Eds.), Complete works of Voltaire (343-526). Voltaire Foundation
• Henderson, J. S., & Wynn, T. (2014). Tancrède. In G. Gargett, & A. Gurrado (Eds.), Complete works of Voltaire (259-263). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2014). Compliment prononcé à l’ouverture du Théâtre-Français, le 11 avril 1763. In S. Davies, & G. Gargett (Eds.), Complete works of Voltaire (341-358). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2013). Violence, vulnerability and subjectivity in Sade. In T. Wynn (Ed.), Representing violence in France 1760-1820 (139-160). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2012). Charlot, ou la comtesse de Givry. In Complete works of Voltaire : theatre 1766-1767 (471-606). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T., & Niklaus, R. (2012). Les Scythes. In Complete works of Voltaire : theatre 1766-1767 (257-470). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2012). Sade et la théâtralité dans Quills, la plume et le sang (2001). In R. Jomand-Bury, & M. Nuel (Eds.), Images cinématographiques du siècle des Lumières (125-136). Éditions Kimé
• Wynn, T. (2011). Un roi en coulisse: le François II du président Hénault. In P. Frantz, & T. Wynn (Eds.), La Scène, la salle et la coulisse dans le théâtre du XVIIIe siècle en France (95-106). Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne
• Wynn, T. (2011). Libertinage. In W. Burgwinkle, N. Hammond, & E. Wilson (Eds.), The Cambridge history of French literature (412-419). Cambridge University Press
• Wynn, T. (2011). Prostitutes and erotic performances in eighteenth-century Paris. In A. Lewis, & M. Ellis (Eds.), Prostitution and eighteenth-century culture : sex, commerce and morality (87-98). Pickering & Chatto
• Wynn, T. (2011). The commonplace of theatre as a school of virtue: the case of Voltaire’s Tancrède (1760). In J. Koopmans, & N. H. Petersen (Eds.), Commonplace culture in Western Europe in the early modern period III : legitimation of authority (131-149). Peeters Publishers
• Wynn, T. (2010). L’Hôte et l’hôtesse. In N. Cronk (Ed.), Complete works of Voltaire. Writings of 1776-1777 (293-322). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2007). Poème sur la loi naturelle. In H. Mason, & T. Wynn (Eds.), Œuvres de 1750-1752 (II). = Writings of 1750 –1752 (II) (1-96). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2006). Lettre d’un Turc sur les fakirs et sur son ami Bababec. In OEuvres de 1750-1752 (I). = Writings of 1750-1752 (I) (143-158). Voltaire Foundation
• Wynn, T. (2004). Masochisme et le tableau sadien. In N. Sclippa (Ed.), Lire Sade (245-257). L'Harmattan

Edited book

• Wynn, T. (Ed.). (2013). Representing violence in France 1760-1820. Voltaire Foundation
• Frantz, P., & Wynn, T. (Eds.). (2011). La scène, la salle et la coulisse dans le théâtre du XVIIIe siècle en France. Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne
• Wynn, T. (Ed.). (2011). Delisle de Sales, Théâtre d’amour & Baculard d’Arnaud, L’Art de foutre, ou Paris foutant. Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA)
• Wynn, T. (Ed.). (2006). Francois II, roi de France. By Charles-Jean-Francois Henault. Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA)

Journal Article

• Wynn, T. (2024). ”Un ouvrage qui est devenu le vôtre”: Voltaire, les d’Argental, et la création dramatique’. Revue Voltaire, 23, 135-45
• Wynn, T. (2016). An anecdote in the creation of Sade's 'Les 120 journees de Sodome'. French Studies Bulletin, 37(141), 94-98. https://doi.org/10.1093/frebul/ktw029
• Wynn, T. (2012). Collaboration and authorship in eighteenth-century French theater. Romanic Review, 103(3-4), 465-481
• Wynn, T. (2011). Voltaire, Marie-Antoinette and the politics of galanterie. French Studies, 65(1), 17-29. https://doi.org/10.1093/fs/knq181
• Wynn, T. (2010). The problem of names and subjectivity in Corneille's Rodogune. Romanic Review, 101(4), 673-687
• Wynn, T. (2008). Sur la tragédie et la comédie: un manuscrit inédit du président Hénault. Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 2008(2), 259-268. https://doi.org/10.3917/rhlf.082.0259
• Wynn, T. (2007). Le dialogue dans le théâtre érotique du XVIIIe siècle
• Wynn, T. (2007). Un théâtre démesuré et l’individu selon Sade. L'Annuaire théâtral (Montréal. 1985. En Ligne), 41, 29-39
• Wynn, T. (2006). Manon through the lens of Clouzot (1948): ‘images troublantes et précises’. French Cultural Studies, 17(1), 73-85. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155806060796
• Wynn, T. (2006). A note on the authorship of Voltaire’s 'La Fête de Bélesbat’. French Studies Bulletin, 27(101), 99-101. https://doi.org/10.1093/frebul/ktl037
• Wynn, T. (2004). Decoration and imagination in four eighteenth-century adaptations of Gerusalemme Liberata and the Tancrède legend. Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 2004:07, 275-293
• Wynn, T. (2003). Sade’s verse. Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 2003(01), 427-434

Scholarly Edition

• Wynn, T., & McMorran, W. (2016). Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom