Africa's Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema
Edited by Lizelle Bisschoff and David Murphy
Moving Image 5•1 November 2014
- ‘This is a well-written book that draws attention to those African films and filmmakers that have suffered most from a lack of distribution. Its mission, to renew scholarly and popular interest in African cinema, makes it an invaluable addition to the field of film studies.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.3, July 2015
- ‘Much of the work of this volume is archaeological, seeking to surpass extant Anglophone knowledge of African film and its premises. Since the emergence of African film criticism in the late 1980s/early 1990s... ‘African cinema’ seemed to refer to sub-Saharan, Francophone film, leaving us the impression that it was born in 1962 with Ousmane Sembène’s Borom Sarret. These essays dispel that misprision.’ — Victoria S. Steinberg, French Review 89.3, 2016, 15
After Clarice: Reading Lispector’s Legacy in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Adriana X. Jacobs and Claire Williams
Transcript 14•13 September 2022
- ‘Hefty tomes such as After Clarice are becoming ever rarer... This expansive collection of essays on the life and works of Clarice Lispector is a welcome exception. Readers wishing to know just a little more about Lispector, or any of her works, as well as those curious to learn more about a particular intricacy regarding the critical reception of her work, are equally well served. Others, of course, might opt to read the book cover to cover. If they do, they will receive a comprehensive education on one of the most fascinating writers of the twentieth century.’ — Paulo de Medeiros, Modern Language Review 119.2, 2024, 283-84 (full text online)
The Anatomy of Laughter
Edited by Toby Garfitt, Edith McMorran and Jane Taylor
Studies In Comparative Literature 8•13 September 2005
- ‘An accessible and educative collection... provides much more than a visitation of standard methodologies, and it does much more than merely celebrate laughter as cognitive, linguistic, or aesthetic function. An indispensable collection for the serious humour scholar.’ — Tarez Samra Graban, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature December 2010, 428-31
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
Britain and Italy from Romanticism to Modernism: A Festschrift for Peter Brand
Edited by Martin McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) •1 November 2000
- ‘The book concludes with a useful bibliography of Peter Brand's work and offers a valuable résumé of work in the field since Brand's pioneering study.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 91
- ‘This rich and varied collection of essays... a worthy homage to Peter Brand.’ — Carmine G. di Biase, Italica 79.4, 2002, 568-72
- ‘A volume that, with its interlacing strands, very effectively offers a picture of the complex relationship between two cultures reciprocally illuminating each other in often unpredictable ways.’ — Laura Lepschy, Modern Language Review 98.2, 2003, 482-3 (full text online)
- ‘Une présentation très claire, dans laquelle toutefois le titre peut paraïtre trompeur, car il resterait à explorer, pendant cette même période, ce qu'apporte précisément cet autre aspect de la culture moderne italienne qu'est par exemple sa production romanesque. On songe à Manzoni (1785-1873) dont l'èuvre reflète à bien des égards le passage du Romantisme au Modernisme.’ — Annie Dubernard Laurent, Revue de littérature comparée 3, 2002, 381-3
Building Modern Jewish Culture: The Yiddish Kultur-Lige
Edited by Harriet L. Murav, Gennady Estraikh and Myroslav Shkandrij 
Studies In Yiddish 20•31 August 2023
Can Fiction Change the World?
Edited by Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, and Françoise Lavocat
Transcript 29•22 January 2023
A Captive of the Dawn: The Life and Work of Peretz Markish (1895-1952)
Edited by Joseph Sherman, Gennady Estraikh, Jordan Finkin and David Shneer
Studies In Yiddish 9•25 March 2011
- ‘This volume is not only the best study of Markish’s career available in English — it is the only one. And yet, one could not hope for a better treatment of its worthy subject... Given Markish’s signiicance to the development of Yiddish literature in Poland as well as the Soviet Union, there is no doubt that any scholar of Yiddish will consult these essays frequently and gratefully.’ — Marc Caplan, Slavonic and East European Review 92.2, April 2014, 321-23 (full text online)
Catalan Narrative 1875-2015
Edited by Jordi Larios and Montserrat Lunati
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 16•28 September 2020
- ‘Two attractive features of the volume are its richness and the way it brings to life the wide variety of works analysed. Critical theory figures strongly in a number of the articles, but it is employed carefully and sometimes subtly as a framework that enhances rather than obscures the narrative texts under discussion. Finally, the editors’ succinct Introduction intelligently, clearly, and deftly ties together the diverse strands of the book’s eclectic content, inviting the casual reader to explore further.’ — David George, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 514-15 (full text online)
The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series) •23 December 2008
- ‘Resulta reconfortante para cualquier investigador interesado en los textos de Miguel de Cervantes comprobar que, tras la explosión de estudios surgidos en torno a las celebraciones del año 2005, cuarto centenario de la publicación del Quijote, el cervantismo está más vivo que nunca. De hecho, es precisamente ahora, tras el paso del ciclón de publicaciones que trajo consigo dicho aniversario, cuando surge la oportunidad de realizar análisis nacidos más al calor de la curiosidad real y el rigor y menos de la oportunidad o el oportunismo. Este libro supone una muy valiosa aportación para el campo de los estudios cervantinos pero también para el estudio de la literatura británica, y especialistas de ambos campos encontrarán en él material ineludible y original con el que ganar en conocimiento y sobre todo, una herramienta con la que continuar avanzando en el no siempre bien conocido ni estudiado campo de las relaciones literarias y culturales hispano-británicas.’ — Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Iberoamericana IX.36, 2009, 189-91
- ‘Rather than emanating from the Cervantesmania that has informed most of the book-length studies on Cervantes's influence on English-speaking writers [since the 2005 anniversary year], the present volume benefits from the fact that its contributors come from among the pre-2005 generation of critics, who have drawn on their experience of digging out Cervantes's actual influence on British literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011
Children and Yiddish Literature: From Early Modernity to Post-Modernity
Edited by Gennady Estraikh, Kerstin Hoge and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 14•1 September 2016
Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture
Edited by Ita Mac Carthy, Kirsti Sellevold and Olivia Smith
Legenda (General Series) •13 February 2017
- ‘Cognition-centered scholarship is here, and Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture is a welcome new contribution... I found myself wanting to dialogue with each of these writers... they enter into essential new investigations into the diversity of our cognitive experiences.’ — Donald Beecher, Renaissance Quarterly 71.1, 2018, 267-69
- ‘Sustained and intensive collaboration is evident in the collection, where every chapter displays a profound and fruitful engagement with cognitive psychology and philosophy that illuminates both early modern literary texts and contemporary science... These essays are thought-provoking, rigorous, and inventive themselves, and as exemplary models of properly collaborative research should interest early modernists, literary scholars, and other researchers into cognition.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 372
The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano
Edited by Xon de Ros and Daniela Omlor
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 24•3 April 2017
- ‘Tal y como promete su tîtulo, este monográfico le ofrece al lector una visión de conjunto del legado cultural de María Zambrano. Un elenco multidisciplinar e internacional de colaboradores se reúnen en esta publicacíon para, gracias a la cuidadosa labor de selección y edición de Xon de Ros y Daniela Omlor, proporcionar una contextualización de la extensa producción zambraniana en relación a las principales corrientes del pensamiento occidental contemporáneo.’ — Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, Revista de Hispanismo Filosófico 23, 2019, 226-28
- ‘Pioneras en su contexto... Coronan el volumen una bibliografía y un índex, dando cuenta de la vigencia del pensamiento de María Zambrano en distintas ramas del saber como la filosofía, la poesía, las artes plásticas o la política.’ — Carmen María López López, Las Torres de Lucca 12, January-June 2018, 285-92
- ‘An important contribution to Zambrano’s bibliography... focuses on Zambrano’s role as a cultural agent, looking at her impact in the following areas: avant-garde, feminism, psycho-analysis, literary comparativism, art criticism and semiotics, autobiographical writing, political theory, historical memory and exile.’ — Pilar Molina, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 70, 2018, 284 (full text online)
- ‘Serious and sustained academic attention in the Anglophone world is in its infancy. The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano takes on a pioneering role by being among the first book-length studies aimed at an English-speaking readership... A coherent and rigorous body of research, inviting the reader to reassess the impact of Zambrano’s legacy alongside her place in Western intellectual history.’ — Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 195-96 (full text online)
David Bergelson: From Modernism to Socialist Realism
Edited by Joseph Sherman and Gennady Estraikh
Studies In Yiddish 6•24 August 2007
- ‘A happy balance between text and context... everything from a close reading of his works to an examination of the literary, historical and cultural context in which those works were produced. This book is, in effect, more than the examination of the works of one author.’ — Eric Dickens, Three Percent March 2008
- ‘Once more the Legenda imprint brings us an exemplary collection of essays on Yiddish literature... A magisterial study of exceptional factual richness which will remain a major source-work on this topic for years to come.’ — Hugh Denman, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 297-99 (full text online)
- ‘Bergelson was arrested early in 1949 and executed in August 1952. His work has largely fallen into oblivion... There is thus all the more reason to welcome this collection of essays. It includes a biographical study by [Joseph] Sherman and essays by various people on different aspects of Bergelson's fiction, among them a fascinating account of conflicts with Abe Cahan, editor of Forverts.’ — Antony Polonsky, Times Literary Supplement 2 May 2008, 23
- ‘The editors have done a remarkable job collecting essays that finally put Bergelson on the map of literary and historical scholarship. This is the necessary first step in assuring that the contribution made by this important Yiddish writer to the development of world's literature does not remain unnoticed.’ — Anna Shternshis, H-Judaic January 2009
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
Fontane and Cultural Mediation: Translation and Reception in Nineteenth-Century German Literature
Edited by Ritchie Robertson and Michael White
Germanic Literatures 8•11 September 2015
- ‘This volume contains thirteen varied contributions which the editors successfully present as a coherent group of essays in honour of a distinguished Fontane scholar, whose own work provides an implicit point of reference... The strengths of this volume lie for the most part in the expository sections, the light that is thrown on unfamiliar corners of nineteenth-century German literary life, and the commitment shown by this group of commentators to its preservation as an object of study.’ — John Osborne, Modern Language Review 112.1, January 2017, 284-86 (full text online)
- ‘This expertly edited, wide-ranging and engaging collection of essays admirably fulfils its aim of putting Fontane’s oeuvre in a European context, thus challenging a narrow view of his work and implicitly of late nineteenth-century German realism as a whole... This is an appropriately eclectic and com- prehensive volume and as such a fitting tribute to its dedicatee, Professor Emerita Helen Chambers, who has done so much to make the German department at St Andrews a centre of intercultural German Studies.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 53.2, April 2017
- ‘A rich panorama of case studies on Anglo-German, trilateral, and multilateral cultural exchange and dialogue (mostly) in the nineteenth century. It will be of particular interest to those who wish to look beyond canonical works and established knowledge.’ — Dirk Göttsche, Translation and Literature 26, 2017, 231-37
- ‘Represents British Germanistik at its broadest, best, and most inter-connected... In overcoming prejudices both against the nineteenth century and against the genre which originated in it, this book really does accomplish the ‘Great Festschrift Makeover’.’ — David Gillett, Angermion 2017, 202-06
- ‘The scope and ambition of the thirteen essays that make up this volume are impressive. Each contribution displays a captivating commitment to detailed study of the primary texts in question, yet, at the same time, never restricting itself to simply textual microanalysis.’ — Paul Whitehead, Comparative Critical Studies 14, 2018, 397-401
Form and Feeling in Modern Literature: Essays in Honour of Barbara Hardy
Edited by William Baker with Isobel Armstrong
Legenda (General Series) •4 March 2013
- ‘The editors are to be congratulated on putting together a volume which maintains a consistently high quality, while ranging widely over a multitude of topics.’ — Leonee Ormond, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 64-65, October 2013, 99-100
- ‘An excellent tribute to the work of Professor Hardy; however, the critical essays and their approach to fiction in the nineteenth century also make this collection of interest to scholars in the field who may not be as familiar with the work of Hardy.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 506
Freedom and the Subject of Theory: Essays in Honour of Christina Howells
Edited by Oliver Davis and Colin Davis
Legenda (General Series) •14 May 2019
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
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
Futurism: A Microhistory
Edited by Sascha Bru, Luca Somigli, and Bart Van den Bossche
Italian Perspectives 36•29 September 2017
- ‘The chapter structure is cleverly designed to replicate a ‘day in the life’ of a Futurist ‘new man’, with chapters focusing on places both large and small from ‘The Skyscraper’ to ‘The Bed’... This book was a pleasure to read and will reward both the serious scholar of Futurism and the more casual reader of twentieth-century Italian culture who may wish to dip in and out of the Futurist day.’ — Selena Daly, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 577-579 (full text online)
German Women's Writing of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Future Directions in Feminist Criticism
Edited by Helen Fronius and Anna Richards
Legenda (General Series) •26 August 2011
- ‘The volume will be of great use to students and researchers alike, as a source of well-written critical scholarship and of pointers to severe deficits in current research. It offers productive methodologies for taking the enquiry forward in areas vital to a fuller, more nuanced understanding of the place of women writers as part of the whole picture of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural history in the German-speaking lands.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 489
- ‘Thus the book’s structure, like its title, ultimately collapses: the future has not yet happened. Yet it is glimpsed here—and it will indeed necessarily entail killing off and reviving the female author and the female reader, undoing and redoing gender, sexuality, and herstory, embracing pluralism and firing the canon. And it will only have been achieved once the gatekeepers become contributors and all critics—including men—are doing feminist criticism.’ — Robert Gillett, Modern Language Review 109.2, April 2014, 547-48 (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)
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
Italy and the USA: Cultural Change Through Language and Narrative
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Alessandro Carlucci and Matthew Reza
Italian Perspectives 44•30 December 2019
- ‘A very holistic assessment of cultural change, even going beyond the disciplinary points of reference of language and narrative to the larger fields of politics and economics.’ — Anna Chichi, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 303-04 (full text online)