Stephen Thomson

I am particularly interested in ways in which ideas of agency and responsibility shape, and are shaped by, literary form and aesthetics.

My recent work on the figure of the sleepwalker - someone who does things without conscious decision - examines these questions with regard to a number of topics, including the narrative role of servants in the nineteenth century, the spectres of history in W.G. Sebald, and the role of the culture critic as opponent of totalitarianism in the 1930s.

My work is interdisciplinary, examining the meeting points of science (mainly physiology), social science, and literature. It also has a strong comparative element, dealing with French and German, and to a lesser extent Italian and Spanish, letters.