Published January 2007

Beyond Écriture féminine: Repetition and Transformation in the Prose Writing of Jeanne Hyvrard
Cathy Helen Wardle
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 69

  • ‘This study offers a lucid and compelling interpretation of Hyvrard that moves criticism of her work in a productive new direction. It will be of undoubted interest to researchers working on Hyvrard’s writing and equally to those working in contemporary French (women’s) writing and philosophy.’ — Kathryn Robson, Modern Language Review 103, 2008, 554 (full text online)

Published February 2007

Journeys of Remembrance: Memories of the Second World War in French and German Literature, 1960-1980
Kathryn N. Jones
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘A fascinating and well-structured approach to a complex subject, and its transnational focus not only provides an original insight into a range of European writers, but also shows how profitable it is to go beyond the more usual national studies of memory and war.’ — Hilary Footitt, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 817-17 (full text online)
  • ‘The study is about memories and impressions of the later years' holocaust... The striking photograph shows us an empty world with a bleak railway line and its sidetracks, making their way into the fearful forested world that was Auschwitz, practically a symbol of the Final Solution. And with this in mind, Kathryn Jones's study is a success.’ — John Dunmore, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 29.2, 2008, 65-66
  • ‘Jones departs unequivocally from Adorno's dictat on the incompatibility of art and atrocity and, through her deft presentation of a succession of more or less metaphorical journeys, she makes a good case. This valuable book for all scholars of post-war French and Ger man culture will enhance the reader’s understanding of what Paul Ricoeur once termed 'l'événement fondateur négatif' of the last century.’ — David Platten, French Studies 63.3 (2009), 370-71
  • ‘An ambitious study that succeeds in bearing out its claims about diverse yet contemporaneous literary responses to WWII. Journeys of Remembrance is a valuable introduction to a body of post-WWII French and German writing concerned with the intergenerational transmission of memory and the relation between personal identity and cultural legacy.’ — Susan Derwin, Monatshefte 102.1, 2010, 118-20
  • ‘An illuminating comparative analysis... Offers much to consider concerning the development and transmission of memory, generational continuity and rupture, and fictional representation in Holocaust literature.’ — Homer B. Sutton, French Review 82.5, April 2009, 1066-67

Identity and Transformation in the Plays of Alexis Piron
Derek Connon
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘What emerges from Connon’s analyses is the sheer vitality of Piron’s production, its sometimes "anarchic" inventiveness, and its propensity to question hierarchies and cross boundaries of genre... I recommend this book highly.’ — Mark Darlow, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 855-56 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a particularly good-looking book, with attractive hardcover, smart format, quality white paper and lovely typesetting. It boasts the kind of finish that just makes reading particularly pleasant, and all the more so when its content inspires one to return to a relatively forgotten playwright who clearly deserves more attention than his Villon-like epitaph irreverently suggests: ‘Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut rien,/Pas même académicien’.’ — Síofra Pierse, French Studies 477-78

Singing Poets: Literature and Popular Music in France and Greece
Dimitris Papanikolaou
Studies In Comparative Literature 11

  • ‘A well-informed and satisfying study.’ — Peter Hawkins, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 816-16 (full text online)
  • ‘This engaging and stimulating study... is a fascinating examination of the construction and reception of "high-popular" musical genres and specific debates surrounding the question of what "good" and "authentic" national music should be.’ — Hazel Marsh, Popular Music 27.2, 2008, 318-20
  • ‘Makes a significant contribution to the study of Modern Greek culture, and also forwards the thinking behind what makes the conjunction between high and popular culture in any context...’ — Hector Kollias, French Studies 63.1, 2009, 114-15

Published July 2007

From Art Nouveau to Surrealism: Belgian Modernity in the Making
Edited by Nathalie Aubert, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Discerning insights typify this volume, that sensitively examines sixty years of visual, literary, musical, and political avant-garde expression.’ — Silvano Levy, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1130-31 (full text online)
  • ‘A welcome and wide-ranging picture of Belgian Modernity up to the Second World War.’ — Lénia Marques, Journal of Romance Studies 8.3, Winter 2008, 77-87
  • ‘This collection of fifteen essays is the first in English to present a wide-ranging overview of Belgian modernity between 1880 and 1950. The result is a richly detailed assessment of specifically Belgian cultural production and of its European context, divided into two sections, the first spanning 1880-1918, and the second the inter-war years... an invaluable study of a period whose cultural production the editors describe as "awkward and intractable, but also enriching and full of unexpected possibilities".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 113

The French Language and Questions of Identity
Edited by Wendy Ayres-Bennett and Mari C. Jones
Studies In Linguistics 4

  • ‘All in all, this volume is a stimulating contribution to the sociolinguistics of French.’ — Aidan Coveney, Modern Language Review 104.3, 2009, 855-56 (full text online)
  • ‘All of these excellent articled examine important aspects of identity. However [...] only the hexagon is explored in detail.’ — Helene Ossipov, French Review 82.3, 2009, 678-79
  • ‘En conclusion, on devra tout d'abord admirer les efforts des éditeurs pour intégrer en quatre parties ces dix-sept articles sensiblement variés... Le présent volume en est d'autant plus précieux.’ — Yuji Kawaguchi, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 118.3, 2008, 267-69
  • ‘This is an exciting book because it looks at various sociolinguistic problems from an unusual angle: instead of explaining them in terms of social and demographic factors, the aim is to study the attitudes they evoke... Altogether a delightful book, full of fascinating information and new insights, presented in a highly readable form.’ — Anne Judge, French Language Studies 19, 2009, 135-50
  • ‘This well-produced hardback presents 19 chapters written by scholars from a variety of backgrounds around the theme of the title... very enjoyable and very readable.’ — Richard Towell, French Studies 63.1, 2009, 125-26
  • ‘Der sorgfältig redigierte Sammelband behandelt facettenreich die aktuellen Probleme der sprachlich-kulturellen Identifikation an überzeugenden Beispielen und macht verständlich, warum in Frankreich, wo er Staat für die Nationalsprache verantwortlich zu machen ist, vieles sich anders darstellt als in den übrigen mittel- und westeuropäischen Staaten.’ — Christian Schmitt, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 125.4 (2009), 638-44

Published August 2007

Regressive Fictions: Graffigny, Rousseau, Bernardin
Robin Howells
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Robin Howells investigates the connections between three eighteenth-century best-sellers in chronological order... everyone will find fresh insights on the eighteenth-century success stories.’ — Simon Davies, French Studies 63.1, 2009, 88-89

Men of their Words: The Poetics of Masculinity in George Sand's Fiction
Nigel Harkness
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This meticulously researched study makes a compelling argument to renegotiate the importance of masculinity in Sand's writing... His persuasive conclusions will therefore be of interest not only to scholars working on nineteenth-century France, but indeed to the wider fields of gender studies and literary criticism.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies April 2009, 224)
  • ‘Nigel Harkness's aim in this excellent monograph is to liberate George Sand's masculinity from the restrictive autobiographical sphere of cross dressing and male pseudonymity and to situate it rather as the driving force of her literary texts. Drawing on a corpus of fifteen novels, he produces a series of authoritative close readings that demonstrate the extent to which the thinking of masculinity, and its inscription in literary representation, are inextricable for Sand.’ — Diana Knight, French Studies 64.2, April 2010
  • ‘Harkness's focused tracking of Sand's performances of poetic masculinity throughout this book undoubtedly furthers critical understanding of the highly complex and multiple narrative positions adopted in her fiction, especially its meta-discursive dimensions. His sensitive and often provocative close readings of Sand's works, especially Indiana and Lélia (in chapters 2 and 5), will inspire fresh appraisals of established Sand criticism.’ — Mary Orr, Modern and Contemporary France 17.3, August 2009

After Bataille: Sacrifice, Exposure, Community
Patrick ffrench
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘In pursuing Bataille’s legacy ffrench seeks not simply to see where it has got to but makes an invaluable contribution to it.’ — Patrick Crowley, Modern Language Review 105.1, January 2010, 254-55 (full text online)
  • ‘Patrick ffrench’s outstanding study provides multiple, meticulously drawn contexts in which Bataille’s writing and thought emerge in a new light, in terms both of their own development over some three decades and of their relation to other, key intellectual trajectories before, during and after that period... essential reading not only for those interested in Bataille but also for anyone concerned with the intellectual and literary history of twentieth-century France.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 112-13

France/China: Intercultural Imaginings
Alex Hughes
Research Monographs in French Studies 22

  • ‘The author's scholarly and intriguing readings could be seen to invite us to look beyond the French framings of China to the texts of writers who know the country intimately.’ — Rosalind Silvester, Modern and Contemporary France 497-98

Published November 2007

La Devineresse ou les faux enchantemens
Édition présentée, établie, et annotée par Julia Prest
Critical Texts 12

Théophile Gautier, Orator to the Artists: Art Journalism of the Second Republic
James Kearns
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘In this first ever study of all of Théophile Gautier’s art criticism produced during the Second Republic, James Kearns brings us a much-needed reassessment of the art critic’s role in the history of French art... this is a highly accomplished study, which should be essential reading both for the scholar researching the Salon during this period and for the Gautier specialist. The material is well structured and the writing style engaging, making it equally accessible to the student or more seasoned researcher.’ — Catherine Hewitt, French Studies 64.2, April 2010
  • ‘This highly informed and informative study exposes a breadth of sources that should serve to prompt new enquiries in Gautier scholarship... Analyses [in this book] suggest the role this fine study may play in releasing Gautier’s art journalism ‘from the simplistic art-for-art’s-sake commonplaces to which it has been for so long reduced’ and in reasserting Gautier’s importance in the visual culture of nineteenth-century France.’ — Greg Kerr, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 567-68 (full text online)
  • ‘Focusing on the period of the Second Republic which spans the 1848 Revolution and the 1851 coup d’état, this meticulously researched and engaging study follows Gautier’s reactions to developments in the organisation of the salon and to the artists themselves through a series of 49 articles published in La Presse... Gautier emerges in Kearns’s study not only as a prolific and idiosyncratic critic but also as one who challenges the label of 'art for art’s sake', embracing an overtly Republican artistic agenda.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.2, 2010, 247

Consuming Autobiographies: Reading and Writing the Self in Post-War France
Claire Boyle
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Perhaps the most effective chapter is on Genet’s Miracle de la rose, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, and Journal du voleur, where resistance to a subjectification threatened by both social and literar y institutions (the prison and the confessional mode, respectively) is sought by tactics of abjection geared (not entirely successfully, Boyle argues) towards thwarting readerly identification.’ — Ian Maclachlan, Modern Language Review 104.4 (2009), 1154-55 (full text online)
  • ‘Attempts at writing autobiographies in the second half of the twentieth century, Claire Boyle shows in her concise, precise and deftly argued essay, have been subject to a curious paradox... The discrediting of autobiographical attempts has been paralleled by an increasing demand for first-person testimony narratives.’ — Karlis Racevskis, French Review 82.5, April 2009, 1065
  • ‘Une épreuve de force: le moi autobiographique, est-il contrôlé par l'autobiographe estimant que ce moi ne peut pas être entièrement connu, ou par le lecteur qui le 'consomme' afin de pouvoir s'identifier avec une personne supposée réelle?’ — Jeanette den Toonder, French Studies 65.2, April 2011, 269
  • ‘Boyle’s thoughtful and sophisticated study of autobiography brings an original focus on the role of the reader, and on the ways in which readers are interpellated and caricatured by, or even excluded from, certain forms of autobiographical writing... If we had thought that autobiography had had its day, Boyle demonstrates both that the genre itself is dynamic in ways we might not have previously imagined, and that the theory of autobiography continues to evolve in challenging and provocative ways.’ — Jane Hiddleston, Biography 31.4, Fall 2008, 763-65
  • ‘This is a well researched and broad-ranging work, and is a useful discussion of the survival of the autobiographical impulse despite the critical death of traditional autobiography... a stimulating study, which lucidly applies key theoretical concepts of 20th century French thought.’ — Dervila Cooke, Modern and Contemporary France 17.1, 2009, 83-121

Biography in Early Modern France 1540-1630: Forms and Functions
Katherine MacDonald
Research Monographs in French Studies 23

  • ‘This useful monograph presents five case studies of Early Modern biographies (including one autobiography)... MacDonald's work frames these two well-known texts in such a way as to encourage continued investigation of Renaissance biography as a fully-fledged prose genre.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies April 2009, 226)
  • ‘The first perspective [in this book] situates biography as a genre belonging to antique epideictic rhetoric... The second is the narrative of what might be called the facts of biographical life... The third is what could be called a concetto, that is, the biographer's own life perspective, conscious or unconscious, in the biography he is writing. This is what really interests Katherine MacDonald, because of her own radical-individualist perspective on relations between the biographer and his subject.’ — Orest Ranum, Renaissance Quarterly 62, 2009, 229-31
  • ‘Elegantly written, clearly argued, and erudite, this is a rewarding and thought-provoking book and a valuable contribution to the study of early modern French humanism.’ — Joan Davies, Modern Language Review 105.1, January 2010, 241-42 (full text online)
  • ‘Interesting and original interpretations of biographies in which reading between the lines was every bit as important as the lines themselves.’ — John Lewis, French Studies 64.2, April 2010
  • ‘An interesting and thought-provoking study which is well worth reading, albeit with a grain of salt.’ — Sarah Nelson, Biography 32.4, Fall 2009, 840-42

Published December 2007

In(ter)discipline: New Languages for Criticism
Edited by Gillian Beer, Malcolm Bowie and Beate Perrey
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Emerging from conferences organized between 2002 and 2006 within a research project New Languages for Criticism: Cross Currents and Resistances, this compendium addresses the question of the search within the modern humanities for new languages for criticism in the light of a broadening awareness of the increasingly interdisciplinary or intermedial nature of cultural production and research.’ — David Scott, French Studies 514-15
  • ‘The ambition, expertise and disciplinary breadth of this collection are exhilarating... Malcolm Bowie’s celebration of the ‘wonderfully impure acts of translation, of provocation, of risk-taking, and of abyssmanship that musical experience involves’ (p. 72) might equally describe this collection of essays. Often lyrical and innovative in their critical style, these essays by distinguished contributors... are also an important contribution to the definition and exploration of interdisciplinarity itself.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.1, 2012, 112

Balzac and the Model of Painting: Artist Stories in La Comédie humaine
Diana Knight
Research Monographs in French Studies 24

  • ‘Carefully focused, tightly written, and well-presented, this volume of close readings of Balzac’s artist stories is a solid and valuable addition to the Research Monographs in the Legenda series.’ — Marja Warehime, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 38, Fall-Winter 2009-10, 119-20
  • ‘Are painting and sculpture equally liable to distort lived experience, or is sculpture capable of securing a closer approximation of material truth? This is just one of the intriguing questions suggested by Balzac and the Model of Painting.’ — Elizabeth C. Mansfield, caa.reviews 2 December 2009