Byron Wells
Professor Emeritus
wells@wfu.edu
Byron Wells, Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages, received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His scholarship and publications focus on the French Enlightenment, and particularly on the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Dr. Wells served on the editorial board of Eighteenth-Century Studies and was Executive Director of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies from 1997 to 2017. While at Wake Forest, he enjoyed teaching courses in many areas of the Wake Forest curriculum, especially the two-semester sequence in French for Business.
Books
Wells, Byron R. Clarissa and La Nouvelle Héloïse: Dialectics of Struggle with Self and Others. Ravenna: Longo, 1985.
Margitic, Milorad R., and Byron R. Wells, eds. L’Image du souverain dans le théâtre de 1600-1650. Maximes. Madame de Villedieu. Actes de Wake Forest. Proc. of the Meeting of the North American Society for Seventeenth-Century French Literature. 9-11 April 1987. Tuebingen: PFSCL/Biblio 17, 1987.
Skuncke, Marie-Christine and Byron R. Wells, eds. Centres(s) et peripheries Les Lumières de Belfast à Beijing. Paris: Champion, 2003.
Wells, Byron R. and Philip Stewart, eds. Interpreting Colonialism. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2005.
Johnson, E. Joe and Byron R. Wells, eds. An American Voltaire: Essays in Memory of J. Patrick Lee. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.
Articles
“The King, the Court, the Country: Theme and Structure in thePrincesse de Clèves.” Papers on French Seventeenth-Century Literature, XII (1985) 543-58.
“Miniature-caricature: La Vita di Castruccio Castracani in theBibliothèque universelle des romans. South Atlantic Review, LI (May 1986) 9-20.
“Narrative Design and the Role of the Reader in Aldo Palazzeschi’s Sorelle Materassi.” Forum Italicum, XX (Fall 1986) 198-208.
“Objet/Volupté: Vivant Denon’s Point de lendemain.” Romance Notes, XXIX (Spring 1989) 203-08.
“‘La Représentation des classes sociales’: Commentary/ Summation.” Cahiers du 17ème, III (Spring 1989) 73-76.
“Translating in Eighteenth-Century France: The Case of Shakespeare’s Theatre.” Michigan Germanic Studies. XV (Fall 1989) 160-70.
“Rêve de la nature, nature du rêve: Essai sur la Cinquième promenade.” Romance Quarterly, XXXVII (May 1990) 131-40.
“Reading the Seventeenth Century: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Question of Plausibility.” Cahiers du 17ème, IV (Spring 1990) 209-19.
“Voltaire: Rhetorical Ambivalence and the Infamous Thing.” French Literature Series, XIX (1992) 37-46.
“Meaning in Response: The Case of La Nouvelle Héloïse.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (1992), 1044-47.
“Rousseau and the Politics of Language.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (1996), 650-53.
“Language and Solitude: Paradox of the Dialogues. Pensée Libre, 7 (1998), 51-59.
“Jean-Jacques Rousseau et les voix de l’imposteur.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Politique et Nation, Ed. Robert Thiéry. Paris: Champion, 2001. 117-26.
“Rousseau’s Legislators and the Exemplar of Sparta.” Pensée libre, 8 (2001), 212-20.
“Venetian Beauties: The Lettres d’Italie of Charles de Brosses.”L’italia nella lingua e nel pensiero. Roma : Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato (2002). 191-98.
“Julie, ou la nouvelle Clarisse: Amour, vertu et la question du moi.”Annales Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 44 (2002).
“Liberté et monstruosité à l’âge des Lumières.” Entre Dieu et diable. Eds. Francois Jacob et Pierre Nobel. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003. 101-116.
“From Revery to Confession: Writing and Reading a Life Story.”Approaches to Teaching Rousseau’s Confessions and Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Eds. John C. O’Neal and Ourida Mostefai. New York: Modern Language Association, (2003), 50-54.
“Language and Solitude: Paradox of the Dialogues.” Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques. Etudes sur les Dialogues. Eds. Philip Knee and Gérald Allard. Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003, 57-66.
“Voltaire and the Comic Genre: Polemics and Rhetoric.” An American Voltaire: Essays in Memory of J. Patrick Lee. Eds. E. Joe Johnson and Byron R. Wells. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (2009), 315-22.