Pankhuri Bhatt
Pankhuri Bhatt is currently preparing her habilitation in the Department of Romance Studies at the University of Graz in Austria. She began her studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi, continued her education through the Erasmus Mundus Master’s program in European Literary Cultures (Strasbourg and Bologna), and earned her Ph.D. with highest honors in Graz. Her research aims to develop an ecopoetics grounded in French pilgrimage narratives to the source of the Ganges. She is also interested in nature in First World War narratives, as well as in migrant literature. She is now devoting her habilitation project to an ecopoetic reinterpretation of the Franco-Italian fable tradition.
The project
Title: The Reception and Evolution of the Fable in French and Italian Literature: From Moral Didacticism to Ecopoetic Resistance (12th–21st Centuries)
"This project proposes to redefine the fable—traditionally marginalized as a “minor” or purely “educational” genre—and to conceive of it as an interface between Nature, Culture, and Technology. Until recently, the French academic community showed some resistance to the use of fables as serious scientific or ecological tools. For decades, French literary studies were dominated by structuralism and formalism (notably Barthes and Genette), focusing on the construction of the text rather than its relationship to the world. Within this framework, fables were often treated as “closed systems” or museum pieces for children. This habilitation thesis will provide the first comprehensive comparative history of the Franco-Italian fable through a modern ecocritical lens. It contributes to Environmental Humanities in Romance Studies by demonstrating that the fable is a vital genre for the Anthropocene. By studying the migration of images and narratives from the Panchatantra (c. 300 CE) into the French and Italian canons, this study traces the genre’s evolution from an instrument of instrumental reason (moral instruction and social control) to a medium of ecocritical resistance. The project posits that the fable is the preeminent literary genre in which the boundaries between the human and the non-human are negotiated, from the work’s Mediterranean transmission to the contemporary “animal turn."
Hosting Institution: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - École Normale Supérieure (ENS-PSL).
Selective Bibliography
- « L’eau purificatrice : les récits de pèlerinages aux sources du Gange », dans Élément(s) et matière(s), à paraître dans la collection « Rencontres », Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2026.
- « Pèlerinage non anthropocentrique : une étude de L’âme du Gange de Tanneguy Gaullier », dans: Niklas Schmich et Melanie Schneider (éd.) Mobilität im Anthropozän, ISBN : 978-3-8253-9669-5, Heidelberg, Winter Verlag, 2026. 87-98.
- « Non-violence et modernité : Lanza del Vasto dans L’événement indien de la littérature française », dans : Guillaume Bridet et Virginie Brinker (éd.) ELFe XX-XXI. Études de la littérature française des XXe et XXIe siècles, ISSN : 2262-3450, Vol. 16 (2026), Ouvrir les frontières de la littérature française, Open Edition Journals.
- « L’Arcadie provençale. Les arbres et la guerre dans Le grand troupeau de Jean Giono » dans : Angela Fabris, Steffen Schneider (éd.): Fragili idilli.Per un’ecocritica del Mediterraneo. Berlin. De Gruyter. 2026. 95-110.
- « On Foot in the Himalaya: Stephen Alter's Pilgrimage to the Sources of the Ganga » in: Françoise Buisson, Fabienne Gaspari (éd.): The Traveller's Body in the Literature, Civilisation and Cultures of the English-Speaking World. Pau. Presses universitaires de Pau et des pays de l'Aldour. 2025. 177-190.
