Angelo Beolco (il Ruzante), La prima oratione
Edited by Linda L. Carroll
Critical Texts 169 March 2009

  • ‘This volume is undoubtedly a welcome addition to our knowledge and understanding of the most remarkable author-actor of the Italian Renaissance. This is especially so textually, in its bringing a significant and neglected work—in terms of theatre and ideas—to an anglophone audience, and in its raising provocative questions about the degree of daring and the limits of the polemical in Ruzante.’ — Ronnie Ferguson, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 576-79 (full text online)
  • ‘A complete scholarly edition of the work transcribing all three manuscript versions of the oration ... This volume should be welcomed by scholars of the period.’ — Martin W. Walsh, Sixteenth Century Journal XLIV:2, 2013, 618-19

Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969-2009
Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O'Leary
Italian Perspectives 1817 July 2009

  • ‘This is a thought-provoking collection that requires the reader to engage with representations and form as critical sites of historical understanding.’ — Derek Duncan, Modern Language Review 106.3, 2011, 889-90 (full text online)
  • ‘For many, the murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 by the BR and the various neofascist bombings have become myths or legendary occurrences ones fraught with profound meaning for the human condition. Even some of the former militants and terrorists — the perpetrators, in other words — have participated in these productions (Moro’s killers, for example). In fact, one cannot help be left with the impression that the artists and the ex-militants are really talking to each other.’ — Leonard Weinberg, Journal of Modern History 84.3 (September 2012), 752-54
  • ‘This broad-ranging collection of fourteen essays is innovative in offering an extremely rich and multi-faceted portrait of this complex topic... makes a real contribution to show how terrorist brutality was expressed, encoded and schematized by the people involved in these dramatic events even before the violent actions became the object of rhetorical analysis.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 490

Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520
Rhiannon Daniels
Italian Perspectives 1917 July 2009

  • ‘This descriptive study provides many details that will benefit any scholar interested in the reception of Boccaccio’s works before the transformations they undergo in the later Cinquecento.’ — Martin Eisner, Renaissance Quarterly 63.2, 2010, 545-46
  • ‘Original and highly detailed... Chapter 1 could usefully be recommended to students of the history of the book in Italy for the clarity with which it presents all of the aspects that need to be considered in a discussion of readership, reception, production, and paratext, in both manuscripts and printed books... A significant contribution to the history of the book in Italy.’ — Jane Everson, Modern Language Review 106.2, April 2011, 564-66 (full text online)
  • ‘This book is a valuable and stimulating contribution to the reception history of Boccaccio. Particularly interesting is the way that Daniels looks at manuscripts and printed editions that have not been given their due, and the reader will constantly come across intriguing details.’ — K. P. Clarke, Medium Aevum 74, 2010

The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli
Edited by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati
Legenda (General Series) 17 July 2009

  • ‘The chapters avail themselves of the entire arc of twentieth-century theories and models of subjectivity and sexuality, to try to unravel Manuele's search for freedom from his all-consuming passion for his mother Aracoeli, and include Freud, Jung, Klein, Bowlby, Stern, Sander, Winnicott, Laplanche and Pontalis, Kristeva, Lacan, Cavarero, Muraro, Silverman, (Jessica) Benjamin, and Butler. These theories serve the novel very well, illuminating the many strands and aspects of Manuele's 'condition' and of the novel... An invaluable teaching tool and thus an incentive to include Aracoeli in advanced university courses in Italian and European literature.’ — Adalgisa Giorgio, Italian Studies 66.1, March 2011, 144-46