Berceo's 'Vida de Santa Oria': Text, Translation and Commentary
Anthony Lappin
Legenda (General Series) 1 November 2000

  • ‘While chiefly important for providing the specialist with a reliable version of the VSO, it also gives a detailed commentary on the text: both of these will now be indispensable tools for the Berceo scholar. The English translation will usefully serve to make the Vida de Santa Oria accessible to scholars of other disciplines.’ — Gregory Peter Andrachuk, Modern Language Review 97.3, 2002, 743-5 (full text online)
  • ‘The problems presented to a modern editor of Berceo's Vida de Santa Oria are daunting. The text survives in a unique medieval copy [which] appears to have been made, at the most conservative estimate, more than a century after the death of its author... Lappin keeps Berceo's text clean and readable by relegating textual notes to the end, and supports the text with over a hundred pages of informed and detailed critical commentary... There is much to be said for [Lappin's] essentially pragmatic editorial approach. It honestly confronts the problem of a late or corrupt copy-text and does not assume, as has happened so often in the past, that an author who has become part of the canon is therefore free from literary sin and incapable of omission or logical inconsistency. Lappin's Berceo emerges as an immaculate composer of verse but a vulnerable story-teller.’ — Ian Macpherson, Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXX, 2003, 112-13
  • ‘Should become the standard reference for all future research on the Vida and, indeed, a touchstone for studying all of Berceo's hagiographies.’ — E. Michael Gerli, Speculum 2003, 2003, 936-8
  • ‘Un buon lavoro, che risolve sicuramente alcuni problemi editoriali e interpretavi.’ — Eduardo Blasco Ferrer, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 120/2, 2004, 411-14
  • ‘The publication of a full lenght study and edition of one of Berceo's hagiographic works is a rare event; even rarer is the appearance of an English translation. But this book is not likely to be remembered for these reasons. More likely is that it will be read for what it is: a radical, but flawed, attempt to breathe new life into Oria scholarship.’ — Andrew M. Beresford, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Volume 80, n.1, January 2003, 119-20

Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000
Clive Scott
Legenda (General Series) 1 December 2002

  • ‘Crossing the boundary between the critical and the creative, Clive Scott continues the debate on the 'undecidable' in the meaning of art text and concomitant problems in the theory of translation.’ — Roger Pensom, Modern Language Review 99.1, 2004, 281-2 (full text online)
  • ‘The imaginative and sensitive essays explore the principles of translation and the notion of comparative literature... Stimulating arguments link all the essays, such as the celebration of the necessary difference between source and target texts, especially in poetry, where 'the' meaning remains defiantly unseizable.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 116
  • ‘Scott is a critic who can find the perfect critical expression for the tiniest little effect, who can describe microscopic modulations of thought and language, and thereby give them status in the reading process. He is also a critic with his eye on the big picture, who has produced a discipline-defining book, showing us where we have got to and suggesting where next we might profitably go. It richly deserved to win the Gapper Prize.’ — Patrick McGuinness, French Studies LVIII.3, 2004, 446-7

Classical Rhetoric and the German Poet: 1620 to the Present
Anna Carrdus
Legenda (General Series) 1 January 1997

  • ‘The tone is confident, the style lucid. Within a few pages the reader senses how purposeful the exposition is, and how well thought out. But what makes Anna Carrdus's performance so assured is her obvious commitment to poetry itself... It concludes with a wish that may sound audacious, yet which the undertaking wholly justifies: 'My findings will, I hope, open up an opportunity for scholarship to revise current perceptions of the history of German poetry.' She has already revised them herself, single-handed.’ — Peter Skrine, Modern Language Review 94.1, 1999, 243-5 (full text online)
  • ‘Die Analysen sind treffich, und die Er≥rterungen zum literarhistorischen und poetologischen Kontext zeugen von groôer Kennerschaft.’ — Joachim Knape, Germanistik 41.2, 2000, 419

Crossing Fields in Modern Spanish Culture
Edited by Federico Bonaddio and Xon de Ros
Legenda (General Series) 1 December 2003

  • ‘Federico Bonaddio and Xon de Ros have put together a very useful series of short and punchy articles which span over a hundred and fifty years of Spanish culture, from the 1860s to the present day... Without doubt this collection would make an excellent addition to any university library. The essays on canonical texts may very well prove invaluable to undergraduate students while those on lesser-known writers, artists, and cinematographers will surely fulfil the same function for postgraduates and the academic community in general.’ — Jean Andrews, Modern Language Review 101.3, July 2006, 876-77 (full text online)

Dante in Oxford: The Paget Toynbee Lectures
Edited by Tristan Kay, Martin McLaughlin and Michelangelo Zaccarello
Legenda (General Series) 4 February 2011

  • ‘A welcome addition to the ocean of Dante studies.’ — John A. Scott, Modern Language Review 108.2, April 2013, 648-50 (full text online)

Edmond Jabès: The Hazard of Exile
Steven Jaron
Legenda (General Series) 1 December 2003

  • ‘A meticulously researched account of backgrounds to Edmond Jabès's poetry... Its focus on the early period in Egypt brings to view an aspect of Jabès's life not much otherwise looked at. And it raises many questions vital to understanding Jabès.’ — Shira Wolosky, Partial Answers 4.1, 2006, 201-04

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

Heine und die Weltliteratur
Edited by T. J. Reed and Alexander Stillmark
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2000

  • ‘Heine was a great reader in the literary patrimony. Every study of his reading experience from youth to deathbed has expanded its dimensions... an admirable volume.’ — Jeffrey L. Sammons, Modern Language Review 97.1, 2002, 228-9 (full text online)
  • Vridhagiri Ganeshan, Germanistik 42.3-4, 2001, 737
  • ‘In a richly diverse range of approaches, a number of new readings of the poems are offered... demonstrates the arresting power of the poet.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 104
  • ‘The volume provides much that is both instructive and enjoyable to read. Joseph Kruse's elegant and learned opening piece provides a perfect keynote address... Ritchie Robertson (in an article that is destined to be recommended to thousands of students) throws fresh light on Atta Troll by examining the nature of mock epic as such as well as its relations to the epic traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance... David Constantine tackles the tricky subject of the Lazarus poems. It is easy to be moved by these, much harder to discuss them intelligently, but Constantine succeeds both in analysing the implications of the Lazarus motif and in making some thought-provoking remarks about poetry and horror. The volume concludes on a high note with a stylish piece by Anthony Phelan on Heine's heirs among contemporary poets.’ — David Pugh, Seminar XXXIX/4, 2003, 360-3

Image and Word: Reflections of Art and Literature
Edited by Antonella Braida and Giuliana Pieri
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2003

Science and Literature in Italian Culture: From Dante to Calvino
Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Simon A. Gilson
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2004

  • ‘Legenda's elegantly produced volume is all things to all people. It does discuss literature and science, but its miscellany is all the more enjoyable for not being tightly constrained by a potentially dogmatic, even questionable, unifying theme of "L&S".’ — J. R. Woodhouse, Modern Language Review 100.3, 7 July 2005, 845-48 (full text online)
  • Speculum October 2005, 1404)

Metaphor in Dante
David Gibbons
Legenda (General Series) 1 December 2002

  • ‘David Gibbon's book is a fascinating and subtle investigation of Dante's dazzling and experimental use of metaphors in the Divine Comedy. ... an important and notewhorty contribution to the understanding of Dante's use, creation, and renewal of the poetic language.’ — Paola Nasti, Modern Language Review 100.1, 2005, 229-30 (full text online)
  • ‘Not only is Gibbons alert to the complexity of the question generally - at once historical, hermeneutical, dialectical, and literary-aesthetic in kind - but his analysis of the texts he invokes is both sensitive and illuminating as regards the variety of Dante's imagery and its functionality within the poem as a whole.’ — John Took, Italian Studies Volume LIX, 2004, 153-4

Modernist Song: The Poetry of Tristan Tzara
Stephen Forcer
Legenda (General Series) 17 January 2006

  • ‘Writing with evident pleasure, Forcer starts from an accessible premiss to go on to explore exciting new ground, teasing out a surprising array of readings and styles... Indeed, as Forcer demonstrates that Tzara’s poetry is a rich and diverse body of work in which classic avant-garde tropes feature alongside more established poetic practices and vocabulary, he clearly exposes both the critical inadequacy of Tzara's epithet as the "Father of Dada" and, on a more general level, the need for a much more inclusive historiography of avant-garde creativity. All of which makes this powerfully argued book a most welcome and valuable publication.’ — Jo Langley, Modern Language Review 104.2, April 2009, 575-76 (full text online)
  • ‘Stephen Forcer's book impresses in that it does not use the myth [of Dada] as a ready-made prop with which to proclaim its subject's importance... What distinguishes Modernist Song, above all, is Forcer's sustained and precise analysis of selected poems, his own interrogations of signifying play, which draw on a range of theoretical tools and critical references.’ — Ruth Hemus, French Studies 492-93

Paul Valéry and the Voice of Desire
Kirsteen Anderson
Legenda (General Series) 1 December 2000

  • ‘Anderson is right. The question of voice goes to the heart of Valéry's relationship with writing... One can learn a great deal from Anderson about this elusive figure of French letters, thanks, above all, to the careful attention she gives to the multiple voices of Valéry she invites us to hear.’ — Suzanne Guerlac, French Studies LVI.2, 2002, 260
  • ‘This accessible study will act as a bridge into the universe of one of the most original and understudied thinker-poets of the twentieth century.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 87

The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford: A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s
Oliver Pickering
Legenda (General Series) 13 September 2022

  • ‘Pickering has documented and illuminated with great learning and skill a minor but nevertheless fascinating figure in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English literary culture – for which all serious students of the period will be very grateful.’ — David Hopkins, Seventeenth Century 38.4, 2023, 720-22 (full text online)

The Epic Rhetoric of Tasso: Theory and Practice
Maggie Günsberg
Legenda (General Series) 1 May 1998

  • ‘Günsberg examines her material with great accuracy... deals with important aspects of Tasso's thought and poetical practice in a meticulous way, and can be useful both for readers attached to traditional rhetorical categories and for those with an interest in more recent critical developments.’ — Laura Benedetti, Italian Studies LIV, 1999, 177-8
  • ‘An attractive and interesting volume that provides a useful addition to the comparatively thin recent output of Tasso scholarship in this country.’ — Peter Brand, Modern Language Review 95.3, 2000, 857-8 (full text online)

The Object and the Cause in the Vulgate Cycle
Miranda Griffin
Legenda (General Series) 13 September 2005

  • ‘One notable quality of the book is its didactic aspect. Griffin takes time to define and explain precisely the complex notions she uses. She states clearly (sometimes excessively so) what she intends to do, balancing presentation of psychoanalytic concepts and examination of the Vulgate Cycle.’ — Michelle Szkilnik, Speculum January 2006, 193-94
  • ‘If we can judge a book by its cover, Miranda Griffin's study wins top accolades: the blue and red of the cover design mimic precisely the prevalent colors of typical 13th-century Arthurian manuscript decorations, while the cover illustration of king dictating to scribe suggests authenticity and accountability both outside and within. Inside, the text is neatly organized into four cleverly titled chapters - see, for example, chapter 4: "Death, Doubles, and (De)composition - along with an Introduction and Conclusion... Her extraction of appropriate examples from the texts of the Vulgate Cycle and application of psychoanalytic theory to these episodes is surrounded by an ample survey of and response to the critical tradition in Arthurian studies.’ — Joan E. McRae, Encomia 28, 2006, 46-47
  • ‘This is a highly accomplished and subtle analysis of the Vulgate Cycle that manages to negotiate successfully between primary material, the critical debates surrounding that material, and psychoanalytic theory. The difficulty of such an enterprise should not be underestimated. Griffin maintains throughout an impressive command of a large corpus... explanations of the psychoanalytic models she deploys are remarkably lucid, well-informed and to-the-point... New, impeccably researched and exciting perspectives on a highly complex corpus of texts.’ — Emma Campbell, The Medieval Review October 2008
  • ‘This stimulating study springs from its author's observation of the striking parallels between psychoanalytic theories of human desire and the centuries-older Vulgate Cycle's complicated narration of the Arthurian Grail quest... The quest for wholeness that marks the Cycle is also, as Griffin cogently observes, paralleled by our own scholarly pursuit of a unified text and comprehensively coherent reading of this multilayered work - a reading that, perhaps despite its author's own intentions, this study quite effectively achieves.’ — Lisa H. Cooper, Arthuriana 16.4, 2006, 88-89
  • ‘The critical encounter between psychoanalytic theory and medieval French literature has produced several stimulating texts in recent years, and Miranda Griffin's study of the thirteenth-century Vulgate Cycle is a welcome addition to the list.’ — Thomas Hinton, French Studies 62.4, 2008, 464-519

Rilke's Poetics of Becoming
Ben Hutchinson
Legenda (General Series) 5 September 2006

  • ‘Eine sorgfältige und konzentrierte Analyse der Dichtungen des jungen Rilke... Die sehr gut lesbare und Beachtung verdienende Studie von Ben Hutchinson hat hier einen bemerkenswerten Schritt auf dem Weg zu einem umfassenden Rilke-Verständnis getan.’ — Sascha Löwenstein, IASLonline online
  • ‘Overall this is a well-written book, offering both a coherent original thesis and perceptive analyses of individual poems.’ — Helen Bridge, Modern Language Review 103.1, January 2008, 282-83 (full text online)
  • ‘A judicious study of impressive scope.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.4, 2011, 480

Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History by Terence Cave
Terence Cave, edited by Neil Kenny and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series) 17 July 2009

  • ‘A very welcome overview of several of the central themes of Cave’s work.’ — John D. Lyons, French Studies 65.1, January 2011, 93-94
  • ‘An excellent overview, enhanced by the editors’ astute introduction, of this highly influential critic’s ideas... an impressive testament to a distinguished and continuing critical career.’ — Emma Herdman, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1156-57 (full text online)

Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France
Michael G. Kelly
Legenda (General Series) 3 October 2008

  • ‘In all, Michael Kelly’s study encourages revised understandings of both the poetic and the utopian in the modern French literary context... A well-informed and instructive survey of both utopia and poetry. All this makes Strands of Utopia: Spaces of Poetic Work in Twentieth-Century France an invaluable source.’ — Teresa Louro, Utopian Studies 21.2, 2010, 357-60
  • ‘A very careful, reflective, and thought-provoking study, and it more than amply rewards the exertions required of its readers.’ — Margaret Miner, French Studies 64.4, 2010, 513-14
  • ‘L'ouvrage de Michael G. Kelly, prolongé par une importante et très utile bibliographie, ouvre donc des voies passionnantes pour explorer la poésie dans la dynamique de sa fabrication au XXe siècle.’ — Michel Blay, Kritikon Litterarum 37, 2010, 168-69
  • ‘Offers a thorough and convincing argument for the need to read twentieth-century French poetry from the perspective of utopia... An important resource that should open up new means of addressing the ever-changing "'idea' of poetry".’ — James Petterson, French Review 37, 2010, 156-57

Cosmos and Image in the Renaissance: French Love Lyric and Natural-Philosophical Poetry
Kathryn Banks
Legenda (General Series) 3 October 2008

  • ‘A powerful interpretation of the relationship of cosmic and linguistic images... a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis into sixteenth-century poetry and intellectual history.’ — Michael Randall, Renaissance Quarterly 62, 2009, 1237-38
  • ‘Dans cet ouvrage savant, où l'érudition ne nuit jamais à la clarté de l'exposé, l'auteur choisit de réexaminer ce que Lucien Febvre appelait "l'outillage mental" du seizième siècle mais en s'attachant moins à la circulation des idées ... qu'à leur expression linguistique et au jeu auquel les soumet le poète ... Du point de vue méthodologique de nombreuses précautions sont prises, à la fois dans l'introduction et dans le corps de l'analyse ... une stratégie d'exposition qui, loin de ramener le différent au même, entend refuser l'emprise de tout schéma téléologique.’ — Francois Rigolot, French Review 83.4, March 2010, 859
  • ‘This is a scholarly and rewarding study based pleasingly on close readings of an interesting combination of texts [...] a detailed and authoritative account of images which goes beyond the purely linguistic, situating its material both within a developing tradition in the history of ideas and against a backdrop of contemporary political, philosophical and theological debates. As such, with its broad and thoroughly researched range of references to writers in different disciplines and genres, it is of as much interest to the general reader as it is to specialists of Scève or Du Bartas.’ — Emma Herdman, Renaissance Studies 24.3, June 2010, 451-52
  • ‘Exemplarily lucid explorations of a number of difficult problems in sixteenth-century poetic theory and practice.’ — James Helgeson, French Studies 65.2, April 2011, 239-40
  • ‘A rich, persuasive account of some extraordinary poetry and a fascinating period of intellectual and literary history.’ — 'MHG', St Catharine's Magazine 2009, p. 85

Laughter and Narrative in the Later Middle Ages: German Comic Tales c. 1350-1525
Sebastian Coxon
Legenda (General Series) 25 July 2008

  • ‘This is the first sustained study of the German branch of the genre of comic verse narratives (maeren) which was hugely popular across Europe in the late Middle Ages... an impressively learned study, based on a huge corpus of primary and secondary texts. A wealth of information on laughter, humour and the reception of late-medieval literature is waiting to be unearthed here.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 110
  • ‘An excellent study that undoubtedly advances our understanding of laughter and its functions in the past.’ — Sophia Menache, The Medieval Review September 2009
  • ‘Copious footnotes and an extensive bibliography document the author's mastery of the critical literature, and summaries of the German-language scholarship, as well as English translations of textual passages, make this study easily accessible to those with no knowledge of German. Coxon's volume offers a detailed and subtle analysis of a limited corpus that provides a significant context for future scholarship on the culture of laughter in the middle ages.’ — Thomas Kerth, Monatshefte 101.3, 2009, 410-12
  • ‘This is the fullest study of the German comic maere to have appeared in a long time, and is based on an impressively wide corpus of sources as well as background reading. There is a wealth of intriguing new information here that deserves further exploration - how the Church’s suspicion of laughter (Jesus never laughed!) was negotiated in these stories; that face and hair were the most frequently attacked body parts here; or that the best jokes were on millers and charcoal-burners.’ — Bettina Bildhauer, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 583-84 (full text online)
  • ‘Si accennna poi al rapporto fra riso e letteratura, sottolineando il fatto che la letteratura medievale è, nel suo complesso, una fonte di enorme importanza per la storia del riso.’ — unsigned notice, Medioevo Latino XXXI, 2010, 535-36
  • ‘Unsigned notice’Germanistik 51.1-2, 2010, 234)
  • ‘As the first comprehensive study of late-medieval German comic tales, this study is a useful resource for medievalists... Scholars will appreciate the comprehensive references to key studies by other Germanists, and less adept readers of Middle High German will value the excellent translations.’ — Lisa Perfetti, Speculum 85.3, 2010, 658-60
  • ‘Gerade dort, wo er tatsächlich eng entlang seiner Referenztexte argumentiert, gelingen Coxon zahlreiche aufschlussreiche Beobachtungen. An diese Ergebnisse Coxons werden bei der Erforschung deutschsprachiger Versnovellen des Spätmittelalters wohl noch viele Untersuchungen (aus hoffentlich diversen Fachdisziplinen) anschließen können.’ — Matthias Kirchhoff, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 2010, 422-24

Octavio Paz and T. S. Eliot: Modern Poetry and the Translation of Influence
Tom Boll
Legenda (General Series) 10 October 2012

  • ‘What has been missing from Paz scholarship so far are comparative studies that take a larger international approach to a poet who prided himself on his intellectual cosmopolitanism... Tom Boll’s Octavio Paz and T. S. Eliot is a welcome contribution in this direction. It presents a careful and impressively researched study of young Paz’s reflections on Eliot’s poetry, which the former repeatedly acknowledged as one of the most important influences on his early work and on his vision of modernity.’ — Rubén Gallo, Modernism/modernity 21.2, April 2014, 564-65

In the Light of Contradiction: Desire in the Poetry of Federico García Lorca
Roberta Ann Quance
Legenda (General Series) 12 April 2010

  • ‘Never dull, Quance has the ability to provoke thought, to make us look anew at material that invites reinterpretation.’ — C. Brian Morris, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 89.2, 2012, 313-15
  • ‘Finely nuanced and very compelling... Given its overall thoroughness, quality, and insight, there are surely good chances that In the Light of Contradiction will refocus a portion of the enormous interest in Lorca’s work to one of its lesser studied corners.’ — Andrew A. Anderson, Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 46.1 (March 2012), 158-60
  • ‘This book sets out to prove [that these three works were part of a poetic cycle] and it does do so, providing on the journey a very enlightening snapshot of Lorca’s frame of mind... Well researched and clearly written... An excellent addition to scholarly studies on Spain’s most important modern poet.’ — Stephen M. Hart, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 89.2 (2012), 213-14
  • ‘We have, for the first time in Lorca studies, an analysis of the three books [Suites, Canciones, and Poema del cante jondo] side by side. Moreover, this is the first time that Poema del cante jondo has been studied in a monograph in conjunction with the Suites... This is a sophisticated monograph yet also an entertaining one. It should compel Hispanists to observe Federico García Lorca’s poetry in a new and exciting perspective.’ — Laura Burgos-Lejonagoitia, Modern Language Review 108.2, April 2013, 654-56 (full text online)

The Spirit of England: Selected Essays of Stephen Medcalf
Stephen Medcalf, edited by Brian Cummings and Gabriel Josipovici
Legenda (General Series) 12 April 2010

  • ‘One of the more extraordinary scholars of the late twentieth century... The range of these essays is the more astonishing at a time when most critics prided themselves on their specialisms rather than their diversity. Medcalf wanted us to see things that could only be understood against the whole gamut of European literary history... Brian Cummings and Gabriel Josipovici are to be congratulated.’ — Stephen Prickett, Times Literary Supplement 26 November 2010
  • ‘A modern parable of birth and death, miraculous encounter and mysterious return, makes a fitting and beautiful conclusion to a book of which we can say, as we rarely can with such confidence, that it was written by a good and wise man.’ — Paul Dean, The New Criterion October 2010, 69-72
  • ‘Cummings and Josipovici have performed a 'mitzvah', a good deed, in editing these essays, which display a brilliant, humane mind at work. It is to be hoped that more Medcalf will be collected for the benefit of subsequent generations.’ — William Baker, Modern Language Review 106.3, July 2011, 871-73 (full text online)
  • ‘The value of this posthumous collection is that it acts as both a lament and a lantern of hope. All we have by way of a memorial are these esoteric essays – but what essays. They show a liberal humanism at its best, expansive learning worn lightly and a belief in teasing out the particularities of a panoply of works... In our bleak climate of fees and looming instrumentality for the humanities, such a voice as Medcalf’s, singing the value of thought and the non-paraphrasable nature of poetry, is as insightful as it is heartening.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.1, 2012, 115
  • ‘Von solchen und literarischen Wundern berichtet das Buch, es sollte in vielen Inklings-Bibliotheken stehen und durch die Hände vieler Freunde der englischen Kultur gehen.’ — Elmar Schenkel, Inklings-Jahrbuch 29, 2011, 378-79
  • ‘Medcalf’s reflections throw great light upon Kipling, Horace, and translation.’ — unsigned review, The Year's Work in English Studies 91, 2012, 765

Paul Celan's Encounters with Surrealism: Trauma, Translation and Shared Poetic Space
Charlotte Ryland
Legenda (General Series) 12 April 2010

  • ‘A stimulating development in Celan scholarship. It heralds the arrival of a significant new contributor to UK studies of European poetry and cultural history.’ — Ruth J. Owen, Modern Language Review 106.3, 2011, 923-24 (full text online)
  • ‘What emerges from Ryland’s excellent book is more than just another answer to the question of literary influence. Rather, Ryland demonstrates through her extremely close reading of Celan’s translations of surrealist poems how Celan’s own poetic concerns shaped and transformed those poems... A valuable addition not only to the literature on Celan and surrealism but on Celan’s poetics of communication.’ — Helmut Schmitz, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 10.3, 2011, 439-41
  • ‘In this important book, which will be of interest to teachers and scholars of Paul Celan, Surrealism, and poetics, Charlotte Ryland... makes a compelling case that Celan’s engagement with Surrealism played a key and lasting role in the formation of his thought.’ — Susan H. Gillespie, German Quarterly 85.1, Winter 2012, 98-99
  • ‘A fascinating study of the position of Celan’s poetry in relation to his lived and textual reality.’ — Catriona Firth and Sara Jones, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 72 (survey year 2010), 2012, 452
  • ‘If ever there were a case for bilingual editions, then, as Ryland so persuasively shows us, Celan’s translations of surrealist poetry make it, through their uncanny engagements with the originals in times that, for Celan, became ever darker... With Ryland’s study, we can return to that particular encounter with a renewed sense of the richness not only of Celan’s own poetry, but also of his activities as a translator of the highest order.’ — Shane Weller, Translation and Literature 21.3 (November 2012), 430-35

Dante's Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity
Edited by Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati and Jürgen Trabant
Legenda (General Series) 6 September 2010

  • ‘From the introduction to the concluding interview with Giorgio Pressburger, this volume of essays is characterized by both authoritative contributions from major figures in Dante studies (Baranski, Gragnolati, Pertile) and also by genuinely original lines of enquiry. Dante’s Plurilingualism constitutes an indispensable point of reference for contemporary Dante studies, an ideal companion to the new Dante editions that have recently appeared, and also acts as a constant spur to reread all of the poet’s works, and to appreciate the ‘plurilingualism’ that is inherent even in those works that that precede the Comedy.’ — Federica Pich, Lettere Italiane 2011, 323-28
  • ‘Although we also find essays that offer a strong historicizing or linguistic focus and others that are powerful contributions to the methodologies and findings traditionally associated with Dante studies, the volume remains of particular note (and importance) for its concern to open Dante up to dialogue across disciplines and to relate him to contemporary debates.’ — Simon Gilson, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 292-93 (full text online)
  • ‘Colpisce e affascina, in Dante’s Plurilingualism, una ben percepibile disposizione all’audacia interpretativa, al “saggio” come esperimento intellettuale; ciò che convince, nell’insieme, è che non si sia di fronte alla mera esibizione di uno “stile” critico – pur di- versamente delineato –, ma ad un molteplice tentativo di indagine su Dante, inteso come oggetto e al tempo stesso soggetto non tanto di una determinata stagione della lingua e della letteratura italiane, quanto di una più ampia e complessa storia culturale.’ — Martino Marazzi, L'Alighieri 39, June 2012, 160-64
  • ‘Proprio nella lingua che usiamo, con cui scriviamo, possiamo essere convinti che Dante sia arrivato prima di noi e che ci abbia lasciato una grandissima eredità. Gli interventi di questo volume riescono a mettere in evidenza tutti gli aspetti per cui la lingua di Dante e il suo modo di utilizzarla appaiono ancora oggi come un 'miracolo inconcepibile'.’ — Irene Baccarini, Dante VIII, 2011, 227-30

English Responses to French Poetry 1880-1940: Translation and Mediation
Jennifer Higgins
Legenda (General Series) 12 May 2011

  • ‘The account of Huxley’s version of Rimbaud’s ‘Les Chercheuses de poux’ is particularly fine, and laurels awarded to Beckett’s ‘Drunken Boat’ are shown to be well deserved. In this respect, Higgins’s readings are consonant with some of her own general arguments, for she frequently conveys the sense of a critical mind finding out more about the original text, as well as testing the qualities of the translation. In her hands, both French and English texts are made to speak to and of each other.’ — Matthew Creasy, Translation and Literature 21, 2012, 255-61
  • ‘This rewarding book deftly handles — and illuminates — a wide range of sources... a tantalizing taste of a fascinating area for further research.’ — Adam Watt, Modern Language Review 107.3, July 2012, 897-98 (full text online)
  • ‘In the years preceding the Second World War [...] a diminution in the quantity of translated material is compensated for by a greater acknowledgement of the centrality of translation to the development of national — and transnational — literary cultures. This study is to be commended for its consistent advocacy and demonstration of that centrality.’ — Michael G. Kelly, French Studies 66.4 (October 2012), 572

Pessoa in an Intertextual Web: Influence and Innovation
Edited by David G. Frier
Legenda (General Series) 30 January 2012

  • ‘As its title suggests, [the book] provides Pessoan scholars and the general reader with a lot of thematic variety and in-depth insights. Some of the papers bring fresh perspectives on topics that had been critically broached before, but are here seen from enriching perspectives. Other papers provide refreshingly new arguments. These are two of the many reasons why one would wish to recommend this volume, both to the specialist and to the student who is starting out on the path to his or her own Pessoa.’ — Francisco Cota Fagundes, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 110.4, September 2013, 1058-59

Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile
Carmen Bugan
Legenda (General Series) 23 February 2013

  • ‘This book is a marvellous accumulation of insights and openings into Heaney’s work in the context of his affinities with the four East European poets with whom he shares an acute awareness that history is ‘the mother of culture’, as Brodsky put it in a comment on Herbert. In the minutiae of her study she has provided Heaney students with a valuable resource that will be challenging to surpass.’ — Gerry Smyth, Modern Poetry in Translation 2013 no. 3, October 2013, 106-11
  • ‘Though many critics have mentioned their influence, Carmen Bugan’s monograph is the first to offer a detailed, in-depth study of Heaney’s relationship with East European poets... This is a very good book, a massively and precisely documented scholarly study, written by someone who has a consummate knowledge of her subject.’ — Adolphe Haberer, The European English Messenger 22.2, 2013, 82-85
  • ‘A well-documented and insightful study of one of the few aspects of Seamus Heaney’s work that still needs attention. As Irish studies are becoming increasingly comparative and intercultural, this is a very welcome addition to the academic discussion on Seamus Heaney’s work and on Irish literature in general.’ — Florence Impens, Irish Studies Review 2014
  • ‘Bugan's book demonstrates just how productive cultural exchange between poets East and West can be. She shows how Heaney borrows the concept of exile - a Cold War topos par excellence - and successfully recasts it in the Irish context, imbuing his work with an ethical complexity and self-awareness that continues to resonate with readers from all corners of the globe.’ — Connor Doak, Slavic and East European Journal 58.2, Summer 2014, 166-67
  • ‘A densely researched and lucid study of a poetic congeniality that Heaney experienced with four East European poets... Published in the year that saw the death of this most influential of contemporary poets, it represents a fitting tribute to Heaney’s relational poetics.’ — Rui Carvalho Homem, Translation and Literature 23.3, 2014, 412-16

Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France
Greg Kerr
Legenda (General Series) 21 December 2012

  • ‘This is a valuable and ambitious study which operates deftly on the edge of cultural and intellectual history and successfully inflects our understanding of the emergence, and the evolution, of a literary form.’ — Claire White, Journal of European Studies 43, 2013, 378-79
  • ‘An ambitious inquiry into key structural and thematic aspects of poetic prose in nineteenth-century France, Greg Kerr’s Dream Cities combines a diverse array of primary sources and theoretical frameworks... Of particular interest in this book is Kerr’s attention to textual innovations pursued by several Saint-Simonian writers, including Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin, Michel Chevalier, Charles Duveyrier, and Emile Barrault.’ — Suzanne F. Braswell, H-France 13, November 2013, 175
  • ‘In this study Greg Kerr intriguingly argues that the contemporaneous development of the prose poem is closely associated with utopian dreaming, as if Baudelaire’s dream of a prose poétique, sufficiently supple and abrupt to adapt itself to the ‘mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience’ ... could alone do justice to these new social and physical structures.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, French Studies 68.1, January 2014, 118
  • ‘This work is a fascinating study of the ways in which the modern metropolis altered not only the content, but also the formal innovations of several nineteenth-century French writers... An innovative and valuable contribution to both urban and literary studies.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1, January 2014, 128
  • ‘A significant contribution to our understanding of the ways that utopian and journalistic writing can be juxtaposed alongside the prose poem and other visual and architectural projections of urban futurity. Kerr convincingly shows how this set of disparate phenomena collectively reflects the dynamic, uncertain, and ultimately unfulfilled desires of a society en quête de forme.’ — Daniel Sipe, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘Investigations of the ‘poème en prose’ as a hybrid form are multiple, and Kerr’s arguments add to them. His aims, however, are distinctive. Rather than seek to explain such hybridity by tracing the form’s identity or development within a specific historical tradition, he presents a more fluid and open kind of contextualization, in which new awareness of unfamiliar utopian rhetoric contributes to our understanding of the urban prose poem. Notions of hybridity are thereby extended and enriched.’ — Richard Hobbs, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 870-71 (full text online)

Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages
Edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Tristan Kay, Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2012

  • ‘A series of Dante symposia organized by Manuele Gragnolati and colleagues over the past few years have brought youthful vitality to an ancient field... There is much careful scholarship and thoughtful reading in this book, which should attract Dante and medieval studies scholars alike, particularly those interested in contemporary critical approaches to medieval texts.’ — Gary Cestaro, Renaissance Quarterly 66.1 (Spring 2013), 323-24
  • ‘As well as offering several original contributions on this fundamental aspect of Dante’s work, it seeks to situate the Florentine writer more effectively within the broader spectrum of medieval culture and to establish greater intellectual exchange between Dante scholars and those from other disciplines.’ — unsigned notice, Studi Medievali 53.2 (2012), 1029-30
  • ‘The essays not only present a rich view of contemporary thinking on medieval notions and expressions of desire but address some of the most compelling issues of modern Dante and medieval scholarship... desire in the medieval context emerges as an issue to be expressed through the unique capabilities of poetry, an experience to be physically, spiritually, and emotionally undergone, and, ultimately, a state to be manifested in the very act of writing.’ — Ruth Chester, Modern Language Review 109.1, January 2014, 221-22 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a well-conceived collection, with an excellent bibliography, that will be valuable both for Dante scholars and every medievalist or early modernist with an interest in topics related to desire: the body, perception, memory, mysticism, just to name a few. The volume achieves a rare balance of interdisciplinarity and cohesiveness, bringing together approaches to the text as diverse as queer theory and translation studies, but maintaining a common intent to map desire as a hermeneutic tool in Dante studies and beyond.’ — Eleonora Stoppino, Speculum 89.3, 2014, 773-74
  • ‘This is a very useful source for Dante scholars, because it offers original and innovative contributions on the many-sided aspects of desire. [...] It is also a very valuable study for any scholar interested in the topic on a comparative or interdisciplinary level and seeks to illustrate how the current discourse on desire can apply to Dante and the medieval world.’ — Niccolino Applauso, Italica 90.4, Winter 2013
  • ‘This interesting interdisciplinary collection contributes significantly to our growing understanding of desire in the Middle Ages.’ — Beatrice Priest, Medium Aevum 82.2, 2013
  • ‘Il punto di forza di questo volume risiede a mio avviso nell'impiego di originali modelli d'analisi dell'opera dell'Alighieri che, offrendo percorsi inediti e accostamenti seppur talora arditi, hanno il pregio di costituire un effervescente contributo al panorama degli studi danteschi. Proprio la materia d'analisi, il desiderio, che si pone come proteiforme agente di cambiamento, l'insieme di questi articoli non manchera' di stimolare nuovi indirizzi di ricerca.’ — Gabriella Addivinola, L'Alighieri 42, 2013

Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology
Clive Scott
Legenda (General Series) 10 October 2012

  • ‘In echoing Walter Benjamin’s disapproval of the view that a translation is intended for ‘readers who do not understand the original’, Clive Scott convincingly argues in favour of translation as a literary art that helps promote the language of the source text rather than seeks to provide substitutes for it.’ — Ramona Fotiade, French Studies 68.1, January 2014, 143-44
  • ‘The literary translation urged on us in this seismic manifesto is neither the creation of an object nor the reaching of a target: ‘Translation’s area of operation is not two langues, but language itself, and translation’s business is not merely to provide a version of a text, but to make the provision of that version a fruitful con- tribution to the development of the expressive potentialities of the language medium’.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1, January 2014, 130-31
  • ‘The real achievement of this volume, I think, is that it pushes for an overhaul of current understanding of the task of the (literary) translator. Even readers and translators who reject some of his individual claims and particular ideas will find that the thrust of the work as a whole leaves a lasting impression. If all this does is serve to remind the translator not to translate as would a machine (word for word, from one language to another, searching for sameness), this is still a valuable contribution.’ — Mairi McLaughlin, Comparative Literature Studies 52.3, 2015, 653-56

Reading Literature in Portuguese: Commentaries in Honour of Tom Earle
Cláudia Pazos Alonso and Stephen Parkinson
Legenda (General Series) 25 September 2013

Théodore de Banville: Constructing Poetic Value in Nineteenth-Century France
David Evans
Legenda (General Series) 1 July 2014

  • ‘Despite the admiration of a number of influential poets — especially Rimbaud, Mallarmé, and Apollinaire, but also Baudelaire and Verlaine — Banville has been neglected until recently. David Evans has written an engaging, richly documented study of the poet that will no doubt arouse interest in his work and provoke discussion.’ — Peter Hambly, French Studies 69.3, July 2015, 403
  • ‘It is part of Evans’s purpose to reintroduce us to the sheer range of Banville’s output and to its abiding preoccupations as well as to its periodic inconsistencies... he is not afraid to give this study, periodically, the feel of an anthology. But make no mistake; this is an extremely important critical venture. It is scholarly, it has a sure-footed control of its materials, it is analytically judicious and insightful, and it draws the reader deep into its own critical zestfulness.’ — Clive Scott, Journal of European Studies 45.2, June 2015, 161-63
  • ‘Challenges the conventional wisdom about Banville's poetry... The strength of the arguments with which Evans demonstrates his thesis can leave no doubt about Banville's commitment to modernity and his significant contributions to the evolution of late nineteenth-century poetics... A truly original reading of Banville and a 'must read' for all those who are working in the field of nineteenth- and twentieth-century poetry.’ — Peter J. Edwards, Modern Language Review 110.4, October 2015, 1138-39 (full text online)
  • ‘In this excellent monograph, David Evans considers with aplomb Théodore de Banville’s voluminous verse output, along with the infamous Petit Traité de poésie française, detailing the ways in which Banville’s virtuosity has been consistently misunderstood over the last century... In rehabilitating Banville’s verse, he highlights the works of other French poets who have fallen either into obscurity or out of critical favor all while blending close readings with rigorous formal analyses. Indeed, few contemporary scholars are as knowledgeable on the technical mechanics of French verse and, at the same time, as able to render in-depth examinations of lines and syllables not merely comprehensible, but readable.’ — Erin E. Edgington, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 44.1-2, 2015
  • ‘Théodore de Banville a longtemps été considéré par la critique comme un funambule de la versification [...]. Pourtant, l’auteur du Petit Traité de poésie française a été vu également comme un législateur du Parnasse inflexible [...]. Le stimulant essai que lui consacre David Evans [...] fait voler en éclats ce paradoxe de la critique en révélant la profondeur que la poésie banvillienne cache sous son apparente frivolité. [...] L’analyse très pertinente de certains poèmes [...] permet à David Evans d’expliquer comment Banville a mêlé, dans ses poèmes à forme fixe, le respect de la tradition et l’esprit d’innovation.’ — Yann Mortelette, Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 115.4, 2015
  • ‘Banville has frequently been dismissed as a poetic acrobat, a superb manipulator of rhythm and rhyme, who, however, had little of value to say. [...] David Evans has given us a far more comprehensive and subtler assessment of Banville’s achievements. [...] As a specialist of nineteenth-century French poetry and an outstanding metrician, Evans is well placed to pursue such a study, and his work is thoroughly grounded both in critical studies and in primary texts. [...] a brilliant and highly readable exploration of the poet’s techniques [offering] new insights expressed with admirable clarity. [...] Banville’s poetry is set within a rich framework, ranging from the lofty claims of Romanticism through the debunking works of Surrealism and Dadaism to the formal fireworks of Oulipo. [...] Evans writes well, with clarity and nuance, eschewing jargon and revealing that musicality is not just in his subject but in his medium. This is a work that should be in all university libraries and will richly reward anyone wit’ — Rosemary Lloyd, H-France 16:165, August 2016

Selected Essays of Malcolm Bowie I: Dreams of Knowledge
Malcolm Bowie
Legenda (General Series) vol 1 of 24 December 2013

  • ‘Only someone with Bowie’s exquisite powers of expression and formidably focused, well-stocked mind could home in so closely on the multilevelled play of thought in some of the most difficult modern writers, and especially on the places where their work crosses aesthetic boundaries... It is therefore a huge treat to be able to revel in the publication of his Selected Essays, impeccably edited by Alison Finch and beautifully produced by Legenda... Even in the space of a short review, Bowie’s writing offers both pleasure and intense mental stimulation. For readers old and new, there are marvels in store in these two magnificent volumes.’ — Michael Sheringham, French Studies 68.3, July 2014, 422-23
  • ‘These two volumes can only add to our sense of [Bowie's] importance... Criticism like this is clearly so much more than criticism: it is an engagement with the act of creation that is brought back to creation itself. These two volumes are full of brilliance and insight and deftly communicated and thus infectious pleasure.’ — Patrick McGuinness, Times Literary Supplement 5805, 4 July 2014, 21
  • ‘His readings are always marked by a resistance to easy answers that would attempt to reduce or deny the complexity of the text under analysis; the role of the critic is to illuminate that complexity, giving close attention to the way the text functions and how it guides the reader to a range of potential interpretive moves. While he is a highly trustworthy guide through the intricacies of the text, as he himself writes in an essay on Mallarmé, 'somehow the passage through imbricated levels of utterance towards some final state of achieved propositional clarity is never quite the point' (I: 152).’ — Joseph Acquisto, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘How Verdi moves Shakespeare’s Othello around the globe, finding the mental ‘fingerprint’ in Winnicott, introducing Judith Butler, deciphering Stéphane Mallarmé, exploring brevity in Proust (yes), Liszt’s relationship with Wagner, ‘that most exhausting of sons-in-law’: these are just a few of the subjects considered with such zest by Malcolm Bowie, who was a critic of immense talent.’ — Edward Hughes, Times Higher Education Supplement 1 January 2015, 63
  • ‘Evidence abounds in these pieces of Bowie’s keen appetite for intrinsically difficult subject-matter. Indeed, his ability to sustain his critical nerve in the handling of complex material was to become a hallmark of his achievement... Yet alongside this intensity of engagement with serious subject-matter, we also see the poise and panache of a critic who was so evidently at home with textual composition.’ — Edward J. Hughes, Modern Language Review 111.1, January 2016, 228-29 (full text online)

Authority, Innovation and Early Modern Epistemology: Essays in Honour of Hilary Gatti
Edited by Martin McLaughlin, Ingrid D. Rowland and Elisabetta Tarantino
Legenda (General Series) 9 October 2015

Mallarmé's Sunset: Poetry at the End of Time
Barnaby Norman
Legenda (General Series) 1 November 2014

  • ‘This study argues that Mallarmé’s poetry takes up a problem first posed by Hegel’s Aesthetics, namely that art’s self-transcendence can never be complete. Norman offers close readings of four works by Mallarmé (‘Hérodiade’, ‘Sonnet allégorique de luimême’, ‘Igitur’ and ‘Un coup de dés’) while demonstrating Mallarmé’s relevance to problems at the intersection of literature and critical theory which play a central role in the writings of Maurice Blanchot and the early Jacques Derrida, each of whom is the subject of a chapter in the second half of the book.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.3, July 2015
  • ‘Mallarmé’s Sunsets reminds us that regardless of whether Hegel held any influence over Mallarmé’s thinking, returning to the poetry itself can help us better understand 'our own epoch,' our contemporary situation, in ways not yet fully disclosed.’ — Christian R. Gelder, Colloquy 29, 2015, 80-90
  • ‘This study analyses the crucial role of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry in the work of two of the twentieth century’s most important theorists: Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida. Mallarmé’s Hegelianism, a long-contested issue in Mallarmé scholarship, assumes centre stage in Barnaby Norman’s understanding both of the poet’s development and of the position Blanchot and Derrida assign him as marking the transition from the Livre to Écriture.’ — Rebecca Pekron, French Studies 69.4, October 2015, 545-46
  • ‘Norman provides us with an imaginative reading of the reception of Mallarmé’s thought and work by two of the most influential French thinkers of the twentieth century; he returns frequently to the figure of Hegel and his notion of the end of art. This study helps to remind readers of the undeniably significant presence of the poet for more modern philosophy, while Norman avoids the pitfall of losing sight of Mallarmé’s exquisitely beautiful poetic vision.’ — Pamela A. Genova, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 44.1-2, 2015

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

Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt and Secularisation
Sara Lyons
Legenda (General Series) 1 July 2015

  • ‘As British aestheticism continues to enjoy a revival of interest, it becomes ever more urgent to reassess the metaphysical work that Pater and Swinburne have done for us in their search for a way beyond doubt. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater is a timely reminder of our intellectual inheritance from this moment of crisis in Western religion.’ — Orla Polten, Essays in Criticism 66.3, July 2016, 390-96
  • ‘Sara Lyons’s admirable monograph will prove a cornerstone in Victorian studies and will soon become invaluable to students and scholars alike working on 19th-century literature and culture.’ — Charlotte Ribeyrol, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 83, Printemps 2016
  • ‘Lyons’s rethinking of Swinburne’s and Pater’s relationship to religion is absolutely necessary in light of recent revisions of the secularization thesis. She productively complicates the oversimplified binary between belief and unbelief that still too often plagues our readings of Victorian literature, and provocatively asks us to rethink the reasons underlying the Aesthetic Movement’s embrace of an ‘art for art’s sake’ philosophy. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater should be read by scholars of aestheticism, nine- teenth-century religion, and Victorian literature more generally.’ — Dustin Friedman, Review of English Studies Advance Access 4 October 2016
  • ‘A valuable addition to scholarship on Swinburne, Pater and aestheticism.’ — Beth Newman, Victorian Studies 60.1, Autumn 2017, 126-28

The Poetry of Ernest Jones: Myth, Song, and the ‘Mighty Mind’
Simon Rennie
Legenda (General Series) 1 September 2016

Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps
Andrea Gullotta
Legenda (General Series) 15 January 2018

  • ‘Small and remote as it is, Solovki has always been central to Russian culture. Nearly all the central themes of Russian history — the power and schisms of the Orthodox Church and its intimacy with the state; the development of the Gulag — are reflected, or more often anticipated, in its history... The legacy of the Terror remains a battlefield. Books as scrupulously researched as Gullotta’s are invaluable.’ — Robert Chandler, Financial Times 27 April 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s case study of the SLON camp serves as a model for studies of Gulag writing, and makes a bold statement in favor of a new, synthesizing discourse about Gulag literature... All students of Russian literature and of the human condition owe a debt to Andrea Gullotta, who has tread on virgin snow, following in no one’s footsteps.’ — Lydia Roberts, Los Angeles Review of Books 3 May 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s scholarly, in-depth but quite readable book primarily examines the content of the printed output of work from Solovki in the early period 1923-30 and also considers the circumstances of its production, including the constantly shifting and always ambivalent relations between prisoners and camp administration.’ — Trevor Pateman, Reading This Book Online, 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s commendable study opens up a new area of Gulag research and adds considerably to our knowledge of the literature of the Soviet labour camps.’ — Sarah J. Young, Slavonic and East European Review 98.3, July 2020, 563-65 (full text online)
  • ‘An invaluable addition to a growing body of texts dedicated to understanding the multifaceted and complex cultural arena of Soviet labour camps. Gullotta effectively captures the uniqueness and plurality of the Solovki camp experience, preserving the many voices of the camp for future generations of historians and researchers.’ — Julie Draskoczy Zigoris, Modern Language Review 116.3, July 2021, 521-23 (full text online)

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

Decadence and the Senses
Edited by Jane Desmarais and Alice Condé
Legenda (General Series) 17 May 2017

  • ‘I found Maxwell’s discussion of the tuberose, and more speci cally Walter Pater’s conscription of that flower to describe his own rarefied prose style, to be particularly interesting, as Pater’s writing is so often considered the acme of Decadent prose. It seems that the orchid that famously reminded Dorian Gray of the seven deadly sins should, perhaps, have been a tuberose. Equally interesting is Angela Dunstan’s suggestion that Theodore Watts-Dunton’s roman-à-clef Aylwin became for readers a means of owning the celebrity of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or the notion extended by Liz Renes that John Singer Sargent’s Madame X should be considered a meditation on the white, sculptural body and its changing role in modern art.’ — Jamie Horrocks, English Literature in Translation 61.4, 2018, 525-28
  • ‘It is perhaps fitting that the unity of a book on Decadent literature should be best experienced ‘decomposed’ to give place to the independence of each chapter. There is no doubt, however, that the high quality of its constituent parts forms a significant contribution to Sensory Studies and that the collection is a ‘must-read’ for any student of Decadence at the fin de siècle and beyond.’ — Patricia Pulham, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 128-29 (full text online)
  • ‘Desmarais and Condé have done an enormous service by opening up this can of repulsive worms.’ — Dennis Denisoff, Victorian Studies 61.2, Winter 2019, 554-56

Performing Medieval Text
Edited by Ardis Butterfield, Henry Hope and Pauline Souleau
Legenda (General Series) 1 November 2017

  • ‘Collectively, these studies effectively demonstrate the necessity for, and advantage of, an understanding of performance that transcends traditional academic boundaries and the volume, overall, serves as a solid exemplar of how to approach doing so.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.2, April 2019, 248 (full text online)
  • ‘An ambitious and wide-ranging exploration of performance in medieval European culture. Recognizing the ‘complex terminological web’ spun round the terms performance and performativity, the volume acknowledges and accepts performance as a ‘contested concept’. It also, importantly, recognizes the historical contingency of performance as an idea... The contributing essays illustrate both the ubiquity of performance in medieval culture and the very different ways it manifests in and through text, itself broadly conceived as manuscript, image, written word, and musical note.’ — Clare Wright, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 525-526 (full text online)
  • ‘This thought-filled and thought-provoking volume offers a polyphony of perspectives on, and examples of, medieval performance.’ — Blake Gutt, French Studies 73.4, October 2019, 622-23 (full text online)
  • ‘While these essays are likely to be read individually by specialists in their various fields, a reader of the whole volume will be rewarded with an enriched and nuanced understanding of the concepts of “performance” and “text,” and of the explanatory reach of the field of performance studies.’ — Anne Stone, Speculum 96.2, 2021, 482-84

The Made and the Found: Essays, Prose and Poetry in Honour of Michael Sheringham
Edited by Patrick McGuinness and Emily McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) 25 May 2017

  • ‘Micky’s words return here in all their felicity. His appetite, brilliance, and distinct sensibility are intensely present. The editors speak of Micky ‘drawn by what was accidental, unsystematic, eccentric’ (p. ix). They see him glorying in ‘the overspill of things’. They speak of Micky as their ‘friend and colleague’ and this book is a beautiful act of camaraderie.’ — Emma Wilson, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 485-86 (full text online)
  • ‘This starry roster of writers, working in English and French, often operate along lines of creative interplay between chance and choice, the map and serendipity, walking and writing, celebrating the transition from noticing to noting and from there maybe even into actually making poetry.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 375
  • ‘The Made and the Found is a rich volume that will be of interest to friends of the late Michael Sheringham as well as to all those wanting to study the relation between French culture, language and the everyday.’ — Verena Andermatt Conley, H-France 18.214, November 2018

Pietro Bembo: A Life in Laurels and Scarlet
Marco Faini
Legenda (General Series) 15 May 2017

  • ‘Faini has managed very effectively the task of providing an introduction to Bembo’s life and work that is insightful yet relatively succinct and accessible. He gives a good sense of the complexity of underlying issues without overwhelming readers with detail. His writing is engaging and attentive to descriptive effect... Helpfully and attractively illustrated.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 884-86 (full text online)
  • ‘As this slim but elegant volume highlights, the life of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) bridges the transition in Italy from the height of the Renaissance into the early stages of the Catholic Reformation, not simply in terms of chronology but also in his career trajectory... This is a beautifully illustrated work, with more than 30 images, many of which are in colour. It is an engaging treatment and an excellent introduction to this significant figure.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, July 2019, 266 (full text online)
  • ‘La rédaction de cette biographie a été confiée à un jeune et brillant chercheur, Fellow de la Villa I Tatti, un des meilleurs connaisseurs du personnage. Marco Faini s'est acquitté de cette tâche difficile avec une réelle finesse littéraire.’ — Jean Balsamo, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 79.1, 2017, 262-65

The Italian Renaissance: A Zest for Life
Edited by Michel Jeanneret and Nicolas Ducimetière
Legenda (General Series) 15 May 2017

  • ‘This is a Renaissance that triumphantly emerges from the dark ages of medieval Europe, bringing with it the birth of an ideal society guided by beauty and love, thus giving rise to one of the most extraordinary creative seasons of poetry, architecture, and art that the world has ever known... Yves Bonnefoy gives a moving account of his youthful discovery, in a still deserted post-war Florence, of the Brancacci Chapel... The most remarkable pages, however, of these many and memorable contributions are those by Michel Butor, sadly deceased in the same year in which the book was published. Always concerned with ‘micro-événements’ [...] Butor simply fixes his (and our) attention on every tiny detail of Antonello da Messina’s Renaissance image of the Middle Ages in his painting of Saint Jerome in his Study, reading (one presumes) his own historic translation of the Bible. The sense of this descriptive tour de force becomes clear in a final poem in which Butor identifies himself with Antonello.’ — Hilary Gatti, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 887-89 (full text online)

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 Multilingual Muse: Transcultural Poetics in the Burgundian Netherlands
Edited by Adrian Armstrong and Elsa Strietman
Legenda (General Series) 1 November 2017

  • ‘This forward-thinking collection is part of an emerging and significant trend towards analysing medieval literature in the multilingual context in which it was written... this collection has a much wider significance beyond this geographical setting insofar as it provides a splendid model for future research into the multilingualism of medieval literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.2, April 2019, 247-48 (full text online)
  • ‘Through the viewpoint of transcultural exchange, and by giving voice to cases in their contemporary contexts, the editors successfully present an enriching new picture of multilingualism in the fifteenth-century Low Countries.’ — Bram Caers, French Studies 73.2, April 2019, 284-85 (full text online)
  • ‘Largely refuses clichés and tired assumptions about translation and other interlingual-literary engagements, preferring instead to turn new ground for specific analyses of less obvious intertextual, interdiscursive, and intermedial contacts. Armstrong and Strietman have gathered a fine collection that puts on display the richly provocative multilingualism of the early modern Low Countries. Anyone interested in early modern literary culture will be delighted by the insights and methods of these fine essays.’ — Anne E. B. Coldiron, Early Modern Low Countries 3.1, 2019, 145–148 (full text online)
  • ‘This essay collection offers an excellent point of entry for reflection and further research on the impressive literature of the Low Countries under the dukes of Burgundy, and shows how the multilingualism and multiculturalism of the region energized and enriched its poetry.’ — unsigned notice, Medium Aevum 88, 2019, 191-92
  • ‘The Multilingual Muse est un ouvrage important qu’il faut saluer. En effet, il éclaire dans le détail la manière dont se forme culturellement, socio-économiquement et même politiquement--malgré notre remarque ci-dessus--un espace commun bilingue au 15e siècle et au début du 16e siècle. Nombre d’enseignements sont à retenir pour l’historien.ne du politique : la nécessité de repenser les modèles de diffusion culturelle et donc idéologique « top-down » pour privilégier des processus en réseaux interpénétrés, et surtout abandonner cette idée issue du 19e siècle, et pourtant encore bien présente chez nombre de collègues, que l’État dynastique tardo-médiéval et renaissant se construirait nécessairement par l’unification linguistique. L’exemple de la mosaïque étatique bourguignonne dément tout à fait ce postulat.’ — Jonathan Dumont, H-France 19, November 2019, 220
  • ‘This is an exciting volume which sheds important light on multilingualism in the world of the Burgundian Netherlands during the late Middle Ages.’ — Albrecht Classen, Mediaevistik 31, 2018, 465-67

Swinburne’s Style: An Experiment in Verse History
L. M. Kilbride
Legenda (General Series) 10 September 2018

  • ‘An ambitious attempt to reckon with the poet’s achievement in verse... this book helps us to see Swinburne’s corpus for what it is: one of the most sophisticated formal projects in English verse, no matter what T. S. Eliot thought.’ — Justin A. Sider, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 63.2, 2020, 280-83
  • ‘Kilbride provides the reader with insightful textual analyses that shed new light on a selection of Swinburne’s poetical works, some of which are canonical, others still fairly neglected.’ — Giovanni Bassi, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 905-07 (full text online)
  • ‘Combines a practitioner’s delight in Swinburne’s verse textures with a scholar’s insight into poetic experiment in nineteenth-century Britain and a literary theorist’s investment in social critique.’ — Julia F. Saville, Victorian Studies 63.1, Autumn 2020, 152-53 (full text online)

Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics
Rocío G. Sumillera
Legenda (General Series) 23 September 2019

  • ‘Distrust of the role of originality in Renaissance poesis often leads literary scholars to prioritize logico-rhetorical accounts of invention, which recommended writers to select their topics from authoritative discursive repertoires. Rocío G. Sumillera’s meticulous critical history of poetic invention up to Renaissance England is a persuasive caveat about our need to revise those notions.’ — Zenón Luis-Martínez, Parergon 38.1, 2021, 260-61 (full text online)
  • ‘Taken together, Sumillera and Baron's books [Scarlett Baron, The Riddle of Creativity] cover literature and theory from Aristotle to the present. Each book reaches widely across European languages, combining science, theology and linguistics with conventional literary works. They look from opposite directions at the vanishing point that is the Romantic ideal of the artist as a lamp or organic entity, existing free from influence of any kind. The scope and ambition of the two projects is impressive. There is a great deal here to admire.’ — Bart van Es, Times Literary Supplement 11 December 2020
  • ‘This is a wide-ranging and well-argued piece of work, with a comprehensive and useful bibliography. It makes an extremely valuable contribution to the study of a concept which must be at the heart of our understanding of literary composition in the Renaissance.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 57.1, 2021, 142 (full text online)
  • ‘All in all, this is a detailed yet wide-ranging scholarly book that will serve students and scholars equally well. Although its focus is English Renaissance poetics, the breadth of reference to European sources gives this study a notable ballast and breadth. Sumillera is particularly adept at the selection and presentation of primary quotations, finding the perfect examples — and plenty of them — to illustrate her argument. This makes the book a great resource, as well as a pleasure to read.’ — Catherine Bates, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 278-79 (full text online)
  • ‘This much-needed book is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched chronological overview of the concept of the invention of topics (inventio) in poetry, as it was originally understood in classical rhetoric, that lies at the heart of Renaissance theories of imitation as individual composition.’ — Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation 44.4, Fall 2021, 311-13 (full text online)

SPQR in the USSR: Elena Shvarts’s Classical Antiquity
Georgina Barker
Legenda (General Series) 20 October 2022

  • ‘The book is a treasure trove, and not just for those interested in antiquity. It was written after Shvarts’s death and after access to archival materials opened out a fuller picture of her notebooks, drafts, and discards. Barker takes excellent advantage of this bounty, amply illustrating her study with photographs of the poet and with copies of many manuscripts (which nearly always show how little Shvarts amended as she worked)... [Her] insightful reading of the brilliant poem Homo Musagetes is a fitting culmination of the entire book and a model for the kind of interpretive work that is still to come for many other Shvarts poems. We will all be building on Barker’s superb book in undertaking that work.’ — Stephanie Sandler, Russian Review 82, 2023, 535-36 (full text online)
  • ‘Georgina Barker’s new book on Elena Shvarts’s classical reception is a welcome addition to the growing number of monographs on Russia’s literary reception of Greece and Rome... Overall, this book will be useful to scholars interested in classical reception in Russia. It will also serve in graduate-level seminars addressing reception studies and comparative literary approaches.’ — Zara Torlone, Modern Language Review 2024, 119.1, 176-78 (full text online)

Gravity and Grace: Essays for Roger Pearson
Edited by Charlie Louth and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) 25 February 2019

  • ‘A core series of contributions offers a remarkably sustained and rich reflection on the interplay between the aesthetic and ethical notions of gravity and grace.’ — Scott M. Powers, H-France 20, June 2020, no. 92
  • ‘Works of art function by allowing something to happen, rather than by making something happen, and are nothing without our active participation. The prescriptive weightiness of words in practical discourse is not what poetry, especially, puts in play. That certainly makes this book a fitting tribute to the wonderful work of Roger Pearson, whose own writing is never heavy, never pedantic, but always invites and inspires the reader to continue thinking beyond the page.’ — Peter Dayan, Modern Language Review 116.1, 2020, 188-89 (full text online)

From the Enlightenment to Modernism: Three Centuries of German Literature
Edited by Carolin Duttlinger, Kevin Hilliard, and Charlie Louth
Legenda (General Series) 20 December 2021