Olivier Séguin-Brault

Olivier Séguin-Brault (Montréal, 1995) is a doctoral researcher in 16th-century French literature at the Université du Québec à Rimouski and at the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance at the Université de Tours, where he is preparing a joint thesis on architectural knowledge in the works of François Rabelais. His work focuses on the circulation of technical knowledge in Renaissance writing, and explores the links between literature and architecture in early modernity. He is also editorial secretary of the journals Renaissance et Réforme, L’Année rabelaisienne and Aestimatio: sources et études en histoire des sciences.

His residency project at the Villa Medici was based on the Antiquæ Romæ topographia (1534) by the Milanese antiquarian Bartolomeo Marliano, a fundamental work in the history of Roman topography. François Rabelais, who discovered this guide to ancient Rome during a stay in Italy in the winter of 1534, produced an amended edition under the title Topographia antiquæ Romæ on his return to France. The aim is to document Rabelais’ editorial interventions on Marliano’s text, and to examine the contribution of Rabelaisian publishing to the dynamics of cultural exchange and the circulation of knowledge between France and Italy in the 16th century.