Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy: Essays in Honour of Martin McLaughlin
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Brian Richardson, and Giuseppe Stellardi
Legenda (General Series) •17 May 2017

  • ‘A remarkable unified collection... [the essays] may be read in any order, so rich and abundant are the resonances among them.’ — Carmine G. Di Biase, Times Literary Supplement 8 May 2018
  • ‘Zygmunt G. Barański presents a deeply contextualized understanding of the Orpheus myth in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, taking into account Virgilian and Ovidian antecedents, and the traces of their elaboration in works including the Bucolicum carmen and Familiares. At the heart of his essay, Barański boldly, but not unpersuasively, asserts Petrarch’s lyric collection of fragments to be “the great overlooked Orphic text of the Western tradition”. Brian Richardson’s essay is also among the most ambitious, tackling a massive quantity of Renaissance Italian poetic production—extempore Latin and vernacular lyric compositions—and he does so with aplomb, providing perhaps the first categorization with a qualitative/theoretical valuation of this important but almost entirely overlooked subgenre of poetry... Meriting special distinction, Peter Hainsworth’s contribution rescues John Dickson Batten’s illustrations to Dante’s Inferno (1897–1900) from their relative oblivion.’ — Sherry Roush, Renaissance Quarterly 71.9, October 2018, 1193-95
  • ‘The scope, historical locus and chronological ambition of the present volume are exceptionally wide and rich... The quality of the contributions is invariably high and all are case-studies relevant to the book’s central preoccupation with cultural contact and interchange... an admirable collection, full of stimulus and surprises, handsomely produced by Legenda.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, July 2019, 265-66 (full text online)
  • ‘This volume brings to mind one of Calvino’s own definitions, in his Why Read The Classics?: ‘The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the language and customs) through which they have passed’ (McLaughlin’s translation). The volume invites readers into the palimpsest that is Italian culture, which is to say, among other things, its imitations, its intertextuality and transmediality, and its translations.’ — Antonella Braida, Translation and Literature 29, 2020, 291-96 (full text online)
  • ‘The volume reads as a user guide to the most updated views on literary theory and cultural studies, demonstrating how ‘open’ a field Italian studies has become in recent years. Texts—in a semiological sense, hence comprising all meaningful artefacts of culture—are scrutinized through a wide range of approaches, including linguistic, philological, thematic, intertextual, historical, sociological, comparative. and hermeneutical.’ — Oscar Schiavone, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 737-41 (full text online)

The Diasporic Canon: American Anthologies of Contemporary Italian Poetry 1945-2015
Marta Arnaldi
Transcript 20•13 September 2022

  • ‘The Diasporic Canon ha il merito di aver sistematizzato un fenomeno sino ad ora esaminato solo per compartimenti stagni e d’aver enucleato efficacemente i vettori dinamici e trasformativi che nutrono ed orientano il processo interculturale nella sua prismatica dimensione di pluralismo e transnazionalità.’ — 575-78, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Olimpia Pelosi

Edoardo Sanguineti: Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Paolo Chirumbolo and John Picchione
Italian Perspectives 26•28 May 2013

  • ‘Chirumbolo and Picchione’s impressive volume represents a significant and timely addition to the field, which scholars of Sanguineti will want to follow and explore in the future.’ — Florian Mussgnug, Modern Language Review 111.1, January 2016, 268-70 (full text online)
  • ‘This dense but lucid collection makes a timely and valuable contribution to studies of Sanguineti's works and influence. The combination of critical and personal essays will make this volume particularly compelling to scholars interested in Sanguineti's legacy.’ — Mary Migliozzi, Forum Italicum 250-53
  • ‘A tre anni dalla scomparsa di Edoardo Sanguineti, Paolo Chirumbolo e John Picchione propongono questo interessantissimo volume dedicato al poeta genovese. I due curatori sono da annoverare fra i più prolifici ed attenti critici letterari sulla neoavanguardia italiana in Nord America... Un’autentica perla, un volume essenziale per chi volesse non solo occuparsi di uno dei guru dello sperimentalismo italiano, ma anche per chi intendesse affrontare il variegato mondo della neoavanguardia italiana con più ampio respiro.’ — Beppe Cavatorta, Annali d'Italianistica 32, 2014, 670-72

Eugenio Montale: The Poetry of the Later Years
Éanna Ó Ceallacháin
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2001

  • ‘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

The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
Jamie McKendrick
Transcript 17•28 September 2020

  • ‘This book might have been written for my pleasure. Many readers of this journal will surely feel the same.’ — Chris Miller, PN Review 28.3, January/February 2022
  • ‘There is a natural clemency at work, throughout the entire volume, which has nothing to do with fuzzy-mindedness – quite the contrary, but it means that McKendrick will never deliver the frenzied hatchet-job some poets (whom he admires) can execute, apparently with sangfroid. This intelligence – by definition an ironic intelligence in that it can simultaneously entertain different positions – is what makes him such a trustworthy guide. One feels also that humour, that saving resource, is always within reach... His astute use of quotation to illustrate a point is a fiduciary of sound judgement. Above all, Jamie McKendrick reminds us that there is no substitute for patient looking and listening. This close attention, this authentic love of the art, is rare in our day. These writings are to be prized.’ — Stephen Romer, The London Magazine February/March 2022, 77-84
  • ‘A welcome marker to remind us, if we needed reminding, of how much human beings need, and gain from, dialogue with other cultures and languages. The apparently foreign, as Jamie McKendrick demonstrates so well here, in fact shows us a threshold, a door.’ — Hilary Davies, Times Literary Supplement 19 May 2023, p. 8
  • ‘What Jamie McKendrick so finely details about Tom Lubbock’s English Graphic is an entirely apt description for his own collection of brief reviews, introductions, and essays, on literature and art: ‘The constraints of the form proved exceptionally viable and liberating for his procedures. Providing a “wiry outline”, the form itself allowed for wit, aperçu, mental calisthenics, provocation, aphorism, meditation and surprisingly sustained argument’.’ — George Kalogeris, Essays in Criticism 73.1, 2023, 130-31 (full text online)

Likenesses: Translation, Illustration, Interpretation
Matthew Reynolds
Studies In Comparative Literature 30•25 September 2013

  • ‘The collection reveals an impressive breadth of scholarship, travelling between disciplines and across centuries from George Stubbs’s equestrian paintings, through the more familiar Reynoldian territory of Robert Browning, to the conspicuously contemporary, ‘Dante on the Tube’. This diversity effectively demonstrates ‘continuities’ in literature, impressing upon the reader the contemporary relevance of earlier works through juxtaposition.’ — Rebecca Butler, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 793-94 (full text online)

Pasolini after Dante: The 'Divine Mimesis' and the Politics of Representation
Emanuela Patti
Italian Perspectives 35•1 September 2016

The Translingual Verse: Migration, Rhythm, and Resistance in Contemporary Italophone Poetry
Alice Loda
Transcript 21•13 December 2021