MHRA Publication

⌂ See also the home page of the Legenda book series Legenda (General Series)

Biographies and Autobiographies in Modern Italy
Edited by Martin McLaughlin and Peter Hainsworth
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007

‘Hainsworth and McLaughlin open the volume with a succinct, clear and meaty disquisition on the nature of biography and autobiography. Their Introduction furnishes, in lively prose, an overview of the state of such writing in Italy... A fascinating glimpse into the life histories, and the shaping of life histories, by an eclectic group of Italians. Its chapters provide useful information on the less-known and engrossing new insights into familiar canonical figures.’ — Risa Sodi, Biography 32.3, Summer 2009, pp. 562-65
‘These pieces all share John Woodhouse's sentiment that the life lived and written by an author are "mutually illuminating" and that writing loses much when "seen solely within the terms of a textual universe".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 107-08

In(ter)discipline: New Languages for Criticism
Edited by Gillian Beer, Malcolm Bowie and Beate Perrey
Legenda (General Series) •14 December 2007

‘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

From Art Nouveau to Surrealism: Belgian Modernity in the Making
Edited by Nathalie Aubert, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) •5 July 2007

‘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

‘In his witty, deeply learned and humane "Last Word", Nuttall reminds us that the famous principle of economy in explanation, Ockham's Razor, when applied to Shakespeare's plays, should be renamed "Ockham's Beard", which prompts us to ask of any of Shakespeare's plays, "What else is going on?"... What makes this collection distinctive is that nearly all of these essays focus centrally on genre.’ — Paul Cefalu, Shakespeare Quarterly 59.3, Fall 2008, 345-48
‘Frank Kermode once referred to Nuttall (who died in 2007) as "probably the most philosophically-minded of modern literary critics", and the volume reflects this emphasis... A stimulating collection of pieces, of relevance not just to Shakespeareans but also to anyone with an interest in questions of the nature of literary value.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 118-19

‘This volume, produced under the auspices of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, contains an all-encompassing performance history of three plays of Aristophanes' Old Comedy from their first performance to the present day. Aristophanic comedy, despite its highly politicized, sexual, and time-bound humour, is shown to be the touchstone of comedy, influential from the Renaissance onwards.’ — Regine May, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 807-08 (full text online)
‘This exceptionally handsome and well-produced volume... Its scope, as its title indicates, is very broad, and most of its readers are likely to be selective in the use they make of it. Roughly half of the essays discuss twentieth-century productions of Aristophanes’ plays and there is, inevitably, an emphasis upon the problems involved in translation in both the narrower (linguistic) and the broader (theatrical/cultural) senses of the term.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 45.3 (2009), 351-54
‘There are dozens of plates in this volume, and the visual record of the performances described can be of great interpretative value for the reader. There is a healthy range in the scale of these performances: university productions or small-scale professional (or semi-professional) shows stand alongside much better funded and larger scale endeavours. This is, I feel, essential.’ — C. W. Marshall, Phoenix LXIV.1-2, 2010, 172-75

Image, Eye and Art in Calvino: Writing Visibility
Edited by Birgitte Grundtvig, Martin McLaughlin and Lene Waage Petersen
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007

‘Andrea Battistini's chapter, finally, is one of the most enjoyable; it could be defined as the critical equivalent of Eco’s novel La misteriosa fiamma della regina Loana, in the sense that it shows quite convincingly how the "fantastic iconology of cartoons" and comic books is deeply rooted in Calvino's imagination and how this could be traced in his narrative style, also testifying to the extent of Calvino's engagement with the products of mass culture.’ — Pierpaolo Antonello, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 210-12 (full text online)
‘These notes give but a hint of the richness of Image, Eye and Art in Calvino. This is a compelling volume for Calvino scholars; it should also have a strong appeal for those more generally interested in the relation between the verbal and the visual.’ — Luca Pocci, Angles on the English-Speaking World 8, 2008, 127-29
‘A vital tool for further research not only into the works of Calvino but also into the contemporary cultural interweaving of literature and the arts.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011