Fiction as History: Resistance and Complicities in Angolan Postcolonial Literature
Dorothée Boulanger
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 58•8 October 2022
- Riti Sharma, Research in African Literatures 54.1, Spring 2023, 197-98 (full text online)
Geometry and Jean Genet: Shaping the Subject
Joanne Brueton
Research Monographs in French Studies 61•23 February 2022
Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto
Alessandra Diazzi
Italian Perspectives 51•13 September 2022
- ‘Through her three case studies Diazzi has successfully demonstrated how psychoanalysis penetrated literature and culture in post-war Italy. As she confirms: “The assimilation of psychoanalysis into literature actively contributed to this rewriting of the discipline”.’ — 606-08, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Katja Liimatta
The Holocaust in French Postmodern Fiction: Aesthetics, Politics, Ethics
Helena Duffy
Research Monographs in French Studies 64•10 December 2022
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)
Zola's Painters
Robert Lethbridge
Research Monographs in French Studies 68•7 June 2022
- ‘In Zola’s Painters, Lethbridge has condensed a detailed textual history of art criticism that ran through the novels and the hundreds of articles that constituted the literary and intellectual agenda Zola pursued. He has mastered the vast scholarship on the major artists, writers, and cultural figures of Zola’s times to provide a comprehensively informed analysis of the critical lens through which the writer viewed his contemporaries’ productions... His rigorous archival and textual investigation combines with an admirable ability to write clearly and convincingly about the complex aesthetic, social, political, and economic interchanges of the second half of nineteenth-century France.’ — Therese Dolan, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 51.3-4, Spring 2023
- ‘Dans cette étude richement illustrée, où, parmi beaucoup d'autres, les reproductions des tableaux de Corot, Monet et Véronèse accompagnent et prolongent la perspective du texte, la démonstration s'emploie à décomposer le regard et le goût d'un écrivain qui, précisément, compose avec la peinture et ses maîtres : de portraits en paysages, de critiques en repentirs, à rebours de l'idée reçue d'un romancier à la culture visuelle limitée, insensible aux subtilités et aux techniques picturales, et écrivant lui-même au couteau voire à la truelle, se dessine sous la plume de Robert Lethbridge la figure d'un Zola fin connaisseur et amateur des arts, observateur attentif de l'expression et des délicatesses du tempérament artiste d'hier et d'aujourd'hui.’ — Marion Glaumaud-Carbonnier, Les Cahiers naturalistes 97, September 2023, 347-350
- ‘Zola’s importance as an art critic – his energetic commitment to naturalism as well as his detection of recidivism, his instinctive alliance with artists whose capacities he felt echoed his own – is forcefully assessed in this dense and valuable study.’ — Richard Thomson, Burlington Magazine 165, September 2023, 1042-43
- ‘Robert Lethbridge’s outstanding study of Zola’s painters brings together the many strands of the naturalist author’s complex engagement with the art and artists of the late nineteenth century. This compelling and persuasive narrative maps the politi- cal and aesthetic valences of the perennial dialogues, disputes, dramas, and doubts between Zola and his (erstwhile) friends, Cézanne, Manet, Monet, and others in the Impressionist circle.’ — Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, French Studies 2023 (full text online)
- ‘Zola’s Painters offers an excellent example of why scholarly work on the nineteenth century is so important: the myths and half-truths, as well as the political, social, and personal complexities which shaped the art and literature of the period and their reception, need to be fully interrogated, even if we are left with more intriguing questions than satisfying answers.’ — Claire Moran, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 624-25 (full text online)
Words Like Fire: Prophecy and Apocalypse in Apollinaire, Marinetti and Pound
James P. Leveque
Studies In Comparative Literature 50•28 April 2022
- ‘This book is a welcome contribution to avant-garde studies in Europe and North America... Devoted primarily to poetry, it examines the early literary activities of three giants who helped shape our response to the twentieth century: Guillaume Apollinaire in France, F. T. Marinetti in Italy, and Ezra Pound in England and America. To my knowledge, this is the only book-length study of all three poets, each of whom—officially or unofficially—headed a major literary movement.’ — Willard Bohn, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 587-89 (full text online)
Dwelling on Grief: Narratives of Mourning Across Time and Forms
Edited by Simona Corso, Florian Mussgnug, and Jennifer Rushworth
Transcript 22•7 June 2022
- ‘Engaging with the long and multimedial history of cultural practices of mourning and the outputs they inspired, this book emphasises the transhistorical and communal dimension of grief. Such an impressive methodological and disciplinary variety – in addition to the volume’s broad temporal scope – is what sets Dwelling on Grief apart from other studies that favour a narrower linguistic, methodological, or chronological focus... The volume offers valuable insights to specialists across the humanities and, given its readability and the wonderful juxtaposition of academic and creative forms of writing, it may also be of interest to readers seeking to expand their understanding of this universal dimension of the human experience.’ — Silvia Vittonatto, Status Quaestionis 24, 2023, 387-90
- ‘Indagine agile e accattivante, A Gaping Wound fornisce una chiara ed elegante mappatura dell’evoluzione del mourning letterario italiano e si pone come strumento critico innovativo e proficuo a chi voglia conoscere e vagliare il variegato universo della Sehnsucht autoriale postmoderna.’ — Olimpia Pelosi, Annali d'Italianistica 41, 2023, 603-06
- ‘Il carattere innovativo del volume – soprattutto per il panorama criti-co italiano in cui questo tema trova solo sporadiche analisi e non è ancora stato oggetto di un’indagine così ampia – è anche offerto dal confronto con le più consolidate teorie del lutto – a cominciare dalla distinzione freudiana tra lutto e melanconia fino alla riflessione di Derrida, Heidegger, Agamben e Barthes, dalla revisione della relazione tra lutto e poesia nel Medioevo fino alle più recenti questioni globali.’ — Claudia Cao, Between 13.25, 2023 (full text online)
Literature, Democracy and Transitional Justice: Comparative World Perspectives
Edited by Mohamed-Salah Omri and Philippe Roussin
Transcript 19•10 December 2022
Diego Rivera and Juan Rulfo: Post-Revolutionary Body Politics 1922-1965
Lucy O’Sullivan
Visual Culture 3•23 February 2022
From Puppet to Cyborg: Pinocchio’s Posthuman Journey
Georgia Panteli
Studies In Comparative Literature 40•28 April 2022
- ‘Panteli achieves no small feat by negotiating seven case studies across three decades and even more national contexts and languages, and the book’s strength is in capaciously demonstrating how the Pinocchio myth can be a useful, even playful, lens for approaching contemporary texts in which the human condition is desired or negotiated.’ — Kelly McKisson, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 595-97 (full text online)
Labours of Attention: Work, Class and Society in French and Francophone Literature and Culture
Adam Watt
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2022