Eric Robertson (literary critic)

Eric Robertson is Professor of Modern French Literary and Visual Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research focuses primarily on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and the visual arts, with particular emphasis on European Modernism and the avant-gardes. He is the author of Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (2006), Writing Between the Lines, a study of the bilingual novelist and essayist René Schickele (1995), and various articles and chapters on 20th century French literature, especially poetry, and visual arts. He is also the co-editor of Yvan Goll - Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts (1997), Robert Desnos: Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century (2006), Dada and Beyond Volume 1: Dada Discourses (2011) and Dada and Beyond Volume 2: Dada and its Legacies (2012). Professor Robertson recently completed a monograph exploring the writings of Blaise Cendrars in the light of his interactions with artists, photographers and filmmakers, including Sonia Delaunay, Robert Delaunay, Robert Doisneau, Abel Gance, Fernand Léger and Léopold Survage. Further ongoing projects include a study of avant-garde art and virtual technologies.

Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor, published by Yale University Press, considers the close connections between the writing, painting and sculpture of Hans Jean Arp and reassesses his contribution to major artistic movements of the 20th century. This book was awarded the 2007 R.H. Gapper Book Prize. The award, made annually by the Society for French Studies, is for the best book by a scholar working in Britain or Ireland in French studies.

Publications

Authored and edited books

• Dada and Beyond, vol 2: Dada and its Legacies, ed. with Elza Adamowicz (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2012)
• Dada and Beyond, vol 1: Dada Discourses, ed. with Elza Adamowicz (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2011)
• Arp: Painter, Poet, Sculptor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006)
• Robert Desnos: Surrealism in the Twenty-First Century, ed. with Marie-Claire Barnet and Nigel Saint (Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Vienna: Peter Lang, 2006)
• Yvan Goll – Claire Goll: Texts and Contexts, ed. with Robert Vilain (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997)
• Writing Between the Lines: René Schickele, ‘Citoyen français, deutscher Dichter’ 1883-1940 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995)