John D. Lyons teaches at the University of Virginia and writes about early modern French literature and culture. He is the author of many books, including Tragedy and the Return of the Dead (2018), The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century French Literature (2011), Before Imagination: Embodied Thought From Montaigne to Rousseau (2005), and French Literature: A Very Short Introduction (2010). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to French Literature (2015). In 2007 he was named chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.