This book owes its existence to a chance conversation over dinner in Edinburgh some thirteen years ago, during the course of which I realized for the first time that “genius” is a word that it is risky to claim to understand. This discovery bothered me, and I began to read. One thing led to another, and by the time I had amassed a sizeable bibliography I had the good fortune to teach a graduate seminar in the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University during the fall semester of 2006; the enthusiasm of the participants confirmed my sense that there were so many things one might mean by “genius” that it was worth writing a book about them. Let me therefore begin these preliminary remarks by recording my gratitude to Peter France and Peter Dayan for that conversation, to my colleagues at Columbia for my time as visiting professor, and to the students in the seminar for the zest and the diligence with which they entered into the spirit of the project.
I have been equally blessed by the generosity of friends and colleagues whose own interest in genius has provided me with a treasure trove of thoughts and references on which to draw. Even where I have not directly incorporated these leads, they have all nourished my reflections and contributed to my understanding of the topic. Over and above the specifics of information, reference, and quotation, the conversations I have had and the emails that followed have been a precious reassurance that my curiosity about genius is more widely shared. I hope there are no deserving names missing from this list, but I should like to place on record how much I owe to Frédérique Aït-Touati, Alain Ausoni, Claire Bazin, Terence Cave, Tim Chesters, Nicholas Cronk, Tim Farrant, Sam Ferguson, Simon Gaunt, Angelica Goodden, Mairéad Hanrahan, Nick Harrison, Wojciech Jajdelski, Andrew Kahn, Catriona Kelly, Marie-Chantal Killeen, Orsolya Kiss, Dilwyn Knox, Elisabeth Ladenson, Robin Lane Fox, Karen Leeder, Ann Lewis, Jane Lightfoot, Katherine Lunn-Rockliffe, Francesco Manzini, Toril Moi, Jonathan Morton, Adeline Mueller, Bradley Murray, Sotiris Paraschas, Thomas Pavel, Roger Pearson, Will Poole, the late Siegbert Prawer, J. C. Smith, Galin Tihanov, Kate Tunstall, Alain Viala, Caroline Warman, Wes Williams, Jenny Yee, and Andrei Zorin.
I also wish to thank the organizers and audiences of the various seminars and conferences that gave me a chance to air early versions of some chapters and to profit from responses to them. In this connection, I should like to make special mention of Brigitte Mahuzier and the students who took the seminar I shared with Elisabeth Ladenson in the summer of 2010 at the Institut d’études françaises in Avignon run by Bryn Mawr College.
The Taylorian Library at the University of Oxford—notably in the person of Nick Hearn, the French subject specialist, to whom I am particularly grateful—the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Butler Library at Columbia University, Google, and numerous online libraries have all been indispensable in providing the material on which this book is based.
Special thanks are due to the people who devoted time and energy to reading parts of the manuscript in draft: Marine Ganofsky, Miranda Gill, Mike Holland, Jean-Alexandre Perras, and the anonymous reviewers appointed by Princeton University Press who read everything. Their comments and suggestions have been invaluable, but any errors or omissions must be laid at my door, not theirs.
It has been a joy at every stage to work with Princeton University Press, and I am particularly grateful to Ben Tate for his genial encouragement throughout.
Hannah Paul and Diane Bergman provided indispensable help in producing the illustrations.
Parts of the introduction appeared in an earlier version as “Genius and Its Others” in Paragraph 32 (2010), and I am grateful to the editors and to Oxford University Press for permission to use this material.
I am keen to report that this book has not been the beneficiary of any kind of award from any research funding body, but only of the sabbatical leave scheme of Oxford University. My gratitude goes to New College and to the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages for their trust and for the intellectual encouragement that the scheme provides. Long may it continue.
Mike Holland has put up with living with genius for a very long time, while also making his own contributions to the result. There is no one else I could conceivably dedicate the book to.
Ann Jefferson
Oxford, December 2013