Published January 2001

Modern Language Review 96.1

Homage to Charles Boxer
Portuguese Studies 17.1

Slavonic and East European Review 79.1

Tucholsky and France
Stephanie Burrows
Bithell Series of Dissertations 25 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 55

North American Short Stories and Short Fictions
Edited by Nicola Bradbury
Yearbook of English Studies 31

The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, Volume 61: Survey Year 1999
Edited by Stephen Parkinson


Published April 2001

Modern Language Review 96.2

Slavonic and East European Review 79.2


Published May 2001

Experiment and Metaphysics: Towards a Resolution of the Cosmological Antinomies
Edgar Wind
Legenda (General Series)


Published July 2001

Diderot and the Body
Angelica Goodden
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Vorremmo sottolineare anche la bellezza del titolo del volume di A. Goodden, titolo elegante nella sua apparente essenzialità ma al tempo stesso anticpatore di uno studio richissimo e interessante.’ — Paola Perazzolo, Studi francesi 139, 2003, 174
  • ‘Welcome, in that it deals comprehensively with a subject which has lurked, half-hidden, in many previous studies of Diderot, often noticed but never fully confronted... Sends one back to grapple yet again with this most protean of philisophes.’ — D. J. Adams, French Studies LVII.2, 2003, 236-7
  • ‘A richly interesting study, written with Angelica Goodden's characteristic vigour, which illuminates both Diderot's works and a wide range of eighteenth-century literature and thought.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 104
  • ‘An eminently readable, coherent and cogent volume which captures the profundity, wisdom, humanity, excesses, sensuality, and frailty of Diderot, both the man and the writer.’ — Roseann Runte, French Review 77/4, March 2004, 783

Eugenio Montale: The Poetry of the Later Years
Éanna Ó Ceallacháin
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Explores the ways in which Montale demystifies his own status as a great modernist, satirizes historical progress and current social life, places himself as a 'ghost' among other ghosts, awaiting his dissolution into non-being which may or may not imply some hidden divine presence, and enters into the 'trivial' contingencies of everyday life... From what may have been the old poet's isolated and disillusioned position, he hits the mark time and again, as this well-crafted study shows.’ — Rebecca West, Modern Language Review 98.2, 2003, 479-80 (full text online)
  • ‘Let me declare myself at the outset: this is an excellent piece of work. It is the quintessence of scholarship: meticulously researched, methodologically sound and lucidly written... I cannot emphasise strongly enough the importance of this volume: every student of Montale should be encouraged to read Ó Ceallacháin's perceptive, and above all, comprehensible interpretations of Montale's later poetry. It goes without saying that the notes, bibliography and indices are impeccably produced.’ — Elizabeth Schächter, Italian Studies LVIII, 2003
  • ‘Effectively charts the continuities and changes in the the relationship between the poet and his history.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.2, April 2004, 237

Modern Language Review 96.3

Slavonic and East European Review 79.3

Yiddish and the Left: Papers of the Third Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish
Edited by Gennady Estraikh and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 3

  • ‘The international roster of contributors covers an impressively broad range of topics... linked by a common thematic thread, the attempt of progressive Yiddish-language writers, intellectuals and activists to reconcile their competing allegiances to the Jewish poeple or religion and their leftist politics. The uniformly high quality of the collection and its breadth of topics and approaches makes it an important contribution to interdisciplinary Yiddish studies and to related fields of enquiry (foreign language and immigrant journalism, bilingual education, minority and exile literatures, African colonial literature, Soviet studies).’ — Elizabeth Loentz, Modern Language Review 98.4, 2003, 1066-7 (full text online)
  • ‘The quality of all the essays is no less than would be expected from the list of contributors, but particularly worthy of mention are Estraikh's analysis of the presence and representation of the Soviet Union in the New York-based communist daily Morga-frayhayt, Dafna Clifford's reflections on the Berlin period of author David Bergelson, and Efraim Zadoff's exploration of the educational systems of the Ashkenazi communities of Argentina and Mexico.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 120

Published August 2001

Le Partage de la Parole
Luce Irigaray
Special Lecture Series 4


Published October 2001

Modern Language Review 96.4

Slavonic and East European Review 79.4


Published November 2001

Treny: The Laments of Kochanowski
Translated by Adam Czerniawski and with an introduction by Donald Davie
Studies In Comparative Literature 6

  • Translation Review Vol 8, No 1, 2002, 26)
  • ‘This bilingual edition will be enjoyed by the casual reader of Polish poetry and it will be useful to the scholar or student of Polish language and literature.’ — Steven Clancy, Sarmatian Review January, 2003
  • ‘Semantically closer to the original than Heaney and Baranczak's version and less awkward than those by Mikos and Keane... For readers accustomed to the contemporary norms of free verse, Czerniawski's Treny may well be the most palatable English version available. For Anglophone students of Polish poetry in search of a reliable translation aid, Czerniawski's version may likewise be the most usable.’ — Alyssa Dinega Gillespie, Slavic and East European Journal 47.2, 2004, 305-6

Published December 2001

Conceptions of the Absurd: From Surrealism to Chestov's and Fondane's Existential Thought
Ramona Fotiade
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Fotiade argues persuasively that the ideas of Chestov and Fondane form the basis of a tradition of dissident thought in the 1920s and beyond... an original and illuminating contribution to French intellectual history, a clearly organized and closely argued exploration of a neglected field.’ — Douglas Smith, French Studies LVII.3, 2003, 414-15

All Puns Intended: The Verbal Creation of Jean-Pierre Brisset
Walter Redfern
Research Monographs in French Studies 9

  • ‘Brisset had been a good soldier, and he was a model railwayman: there was no hint during the working day of the oddity of what he was up to after hours... The fact that frogs turned out to speak what was easily recognizable as French seems at no point to have fazed Brisset, and since the original human language has willy-nilly to be universal, all other known languages must be capable of being derived from French, which was pleasing news for a Frenchman.’ — John Sturrock, Times Literary Supplement 18 January, 2002, 41
  • ‘What indeed can one make of this autodidact who mused about etymology without mastering Latin and about human origins without reading Darwin? Brisset can readily be dismissed as arrogant, Gallocentric, sex-obsessed or simply unreadable. Yet Redfern finds in his work a splendid proof of the instability of language, and also a fine pretext for learned digressions about puns and myths and free associations and what Ponge called 'amphibiguité'... The main pleasure given by this book actually comes from Redfern's own style, which is intelligent, energetic, quirky and never too self-indulgent.’ — Peter Low, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 24/2, 2003, 51-2
  • ‘Walter Redfern ... a particulièrement raison de s'appuyer sur les travaux les plus sérieux de ces dernières années pour situer enfin la place de Brisset et l'impact de ses ouvrages parmi les créateurs littéraires de la fin du XIXe et de la première moitié du XXe siècle. ... Un bonne bibliographie sert d'appui à cette monographie intelligemment projetée.’ — Jacques-Philippe Saint-Gérand, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France November 3, 2004, 732
  • ‘Redfern's treatment is interesting and wide-ranging, but interesting because it is wide-ranging. He shows that Brisset has interested a lot of interesting people, then sums him up: 'Brisset is a trampoline: to take off from and to come back to.' I think he is half right: one may be glad that he existed to provoke this book.’ — Stephen F. Noreiko, French Studies 57.2, 2003, 255-56