Aloysius Bertrand's Gaspard de la Nuit: Beyond the Prose Poem
Valentina Gosetti
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘It is Baudelaire that dubs [Bertrand] the pioneer of the prose-poem and out of this well-meaning act springs the genie of subsequent critical depreciation. Gosetti’s absorbing and hugely valuable historical recontextualization of Bertrand gives us just the tools we need to do Gaspard altogether better justice.’ — Clive Scott, Journal of European Studies 47.1, 2017, 82-83
- ‘In her informative and thoroughly researched monograph, Valentina Gosetti contends that developing a fuller understanding of Bertrand’s Gaspard de la Nuit is contingent upon a wider appreciation of the historical, social, cultural, and literary contexts in which the collection was produced... This study, which includes an appendix containing four beautiful English translations by Gian Lombardo, is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on Bertrand in the Anglophone world. It will be of great interest to historians and literary scholars of French Romanticism.’ — Catherine Witt, H-France 17, 2017
- ‘In clear and eloquent prose, Gosetti presents a lively and thoroughly interesting account of Gaspard that illuminates a creative experimental work deserving of its proper spot in the canon of French Romantic literature... Gosetti convinces the reader many times over that Gaspard de la Nuit is an audacious nexus of literary and artistic motifs that emerge once the portrait of the artist is allowed to share the Romantic limelight.’ — Karen F. Quandt, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 46.1-2, 2017
- ‘This elegant and beautifully written monograph seeks to offer new insights into Gaspard de la nuit, by returning to the literary and cultural context in which it was written, and approaching it on its own terms... Gosetti’s book richly deserves to achieve its aim of encouraging readers to pick up Bertrand, but it also offers an enormously rewarding read for anyone interested more generally in prose poetry, provincial literature, and the role of the fantastic in nineteenth-century France.’ — Fiona Cox, French Studies 71.4, October 2017, 585-86 (full text online)
- ‘«Fascinating work» que ce Gaspard de la Nuit, écrit-elle dans les dernières lignes de sa conclusion: le lecteur en est toujours plus convaincu après avoir lu ce brillant essai.’ — Christine Marcandier, Revue Bertrand No. 1, 2018, 256-59
Haunted Serbia: Representations of History and War in the Literary Imagination
David A. Norris
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘This is a remarkable study, which accomplishes a lot more than a brief review can mention. One of its greatest merits is the convincing and coherent narrative which strings together a large number of apparently disparate works around an axis which is at one and the same time a literary one — the uncanny and its Gothic repertoire — and extra-literary: searching for meaning in both recent past and in contemporary events. Admirably well researched, Haunted Serbia offers an invaluable insight into a turbulent though fruitful period of Serbia’s literary history, which up until now was uncharted territory.’ — Zoran Milutinović, Slavonic and East European Review 95.2, April 2017, 353-54 (full text online)
- ‘David A. Norris, direttore del Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies dell’Università di Nottingham, disegna un panorama della narrativa a tema bellico nella letteratura serba della seconda metà del XX secolo guardando ad essa dall’angolatura delle “ways in which narrative fiction represents the changing relationship between past and present in times of crisis” (p. 35)... L’interessante sintesi di D. A. Norris, proprio per la complessità del materiale da essa messo in circolazione, induce a più di qualche riflessione.’ — Janja Jerkov, Ricerche Slavistiche N.S. 14, 2016, 560-72
- ‘In this well-informed, logically structured study, David A. Norris o ers a lucid and original interpretation of important and in uential Serbian narrative ction between the demise of Tito in 1980 and the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.’ — Ralph Bogert, Slavic Review Summer 2018, 510-12
John Ruskin's Continental Tour 1835: The Written Records and Drawings
Edited by Keith Hanley and Caroline S. Hull
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016
- ‘At a time when scholars often find it difficult to find support for editions of archival and biographical materials relating to significant cultural figures, it is pleasing that this important volume has found its way into print through the endeavours of the editors and the MHRA, whose Legenda imprint makes high-quality editions of such materials available... The edition is perfectly conceived and delivers something approaching perfection. It should be of interest beyond Ruskin Studies, particularly to scholars of Romantic art, poetry, and landscape tourism, nineteenth-century travel, and Victorian science.’ — Mark Frost, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 863-64 (full text online)
- ‘The interest of the texts collected in this volume is on the whole remarkable. They represent a variety of literary genres ranging from the prose diary, the letter in verse, the dramatic sketch, the short story narrative, genres through which the same travel matter is shaped and reshaped, demonstrating the precociousness and versatility of Ruskin’s genius, his witty ironic vein, but also his brilliant mastery of prose... The recent interest in emotional labour involved in diary and travel writing will certainly profit from the fresh material unearthed by this critical edition.’ — Emma Sdegno, Review of English Studies 69, September 2018, 803-05 (full text online)
Lucidity: Essays in Honour of Alison Finch
Edited by Ian James and Emma Wilson
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘This carefully crafted volume offers subtle and sustained reflections on the theme of lucidity as it is manifested in a range of cultural forms and media... This volume of fine schol- arship is dedicated to Alison Finch. As such, it pays tribute to her writing, teaching, and personal qualities, and constitutes a fitting tribute to her own lucidity.’ — Shirley Jordan, French Studies 74.1, January 2020, 157 (full text online)
Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean
Edited by Neil Kenny, Richard Scholar and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016
- ‘Montaigne in Transit proves one of the finest volumes on this overworked author... In a reflective Afterword, Ian Maclean celebrates the scholarly exchanges out of which this volume grew and the generosity inherent in intellectual work. Another aspect that ties these contributions together lies in how the authors foreground the practice of close reading. Such patience with ‘slow’ reading is a welcome change from more ambitious quantifiable, contextualizing, and politicizing forms of criticism that currently dominate the field. The contributors intelligently defend their choice not as an antidote or alternative to these other approaches but as a needed counterweight and complement.’ — George Hoffmann, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 658-59 (full text online)
- ‘In a reading of Montaigne’s classical allusions in ‘Sur des Vers de Virgile’, Terence Cave finds the essayist resurrecting the dead: ‘The quotations from Virgil and Lucretius are haptic, erotic; they come to life, become bodies. And their life flows palpably over into Montaigne’s prose.’ Cave’s is the first of several essays in the wonderful collection Montaigne in Transit to explore metaphors for Montaigne’s thought and quotation practice, and to evaluate how we study Montaigne’s relation to other texts.’ — Peter Auger, Translation and Literature 27, 2019, 353-60 (full text online)
- ‘In sum, the journey through these essays is well worth the effort and strongly recommended to seasoned specialists and fellow travelers interested in the historical development of learned culture in Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. This reviewer wishes them a bon voyage!’ — Michael Wolfe, Sixteenth Century Journal 49.3, 2018, 885-87
Poetry and the Leningrad Religious-Philosophical Seminar 1974-1980: Music for a Deaf Age
Josephine von Zitzewitz
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘Von Zitzewitz convincingly demonstrates that the religious-philosophical impulse in general, and a pull to Russian Orthodoxy in particular, was a widespread cultural phenomenon in the late Soviet period, cutting across the official/unofficial divide... von Zitzewitz’s precise situating of her subjects in their unofficial environment constitutes a crucial key to understanding the semantic and formal features of their work, and in turn, the lonely and frustrated spirit of their time.’ — Ainsley Morse, Modern Language Review 112.4, 2017, 1053-55 (full text online)
- ‘In her impeccably researched and documented book, Josephine von Zitzewitz combines an examination of the Religious-Philosophical Seminar with five case studies of poets from the Leningrad underground of the 1970s and 80s... An important contribution to the study of both late-Soviet poetry and religious literary culture.’ — Sarah Clovis Bishop, Slavic and East European Journal 61.4, Winter 2017, 913-14
The Poetry of Ernest Jones: Myth, Song, and the ‘Mighty Mind’
Simon Rennie
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
Rewriting Les Mystères de Paris: The Mystères Urbains and the Palimpsest
Amy Wigelsworth
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘Presentant des demonstrations dont Jes etapes sont habilement resumees pour clore chaque chapitre, Rewriting Les Mysteres de Paris offre des etudes fouillees d'reuvres riches mais rarement traitees par la critique... La demonstration est convaincante et stimulante par Jes avenues de reflexion qu'elle ouvre.’ — Nicolas Gauthier, L'Esprit Créateur 57.1, 2017, 141
Writers' Block: The Paris Antifascist Congress of 1935
Jacob Boas
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016
- ‘[Boas concludes that] this Congress was a 'shining assembly of the princes of the pen' and that it marked the apogee of the Soviet influence in the West, shortly to be eroded by a series of show trials in 1936/38... whereas Western writers suffered no long-term damage to their careers, many Soviet delegates awaited a dire future: Kirshon and Koltsov perished in a GULAG, Babel vanished with- out trace in 1939, and even Boris Pasternak – though surviving the Stalinist era – was eventually denied the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded him in 1985.’ — Jörg Thunecke, International Feuchtwanger Society Newsletter 22, 2017, 66-68
- ‘Situating his subject against the menacing backdrop of rising totalitarianism in East and West, Jacob Boas provides a compelling narrative of the five-day congress through a series of short, semi-biographical portraits, or vignettes, of some of the key European intellectuals that took part... The book is exceptionally well written and well researched, drawing on an impressive variety of sources, both published and unpublished, in Russian, French, German, Dutch, English, and Spanish. What emerges is a captivating portrait of the state of European intellectual life in the 1930s.’ — Alastair Hemmens, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 636-37 (full text online)