Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism
Edited by David Adams and Galin Tihanov
Legenda (General Series) •26 August 2011

Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969-2009
Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O'Leary
Italian Perspectives 18•17 July 2009

  • ‘This is a thought-provoking collection that requires the reader to engage with representations and form as critical sites of historical understanding.’ — Derek Duncan, Modern Language Review 106.3, 2011, 889-90 (full text online)
  • ‘For many, the murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 by the BR and the various neofascist bombings have become myths or legendary occurrences ones fraught with profound meaning for the human condition. Even some of the former militants and terrorists — the perpetrators, in other words — have participated in these productions (Moro’s killers, for example). In fact, one cannot help be left with the impression that the artists and the ex-militants are really talking to each other.’ — Leonard Weinberg, Journal of Modern History 84.3 (September 2012), 752-54
  • ‘This broad-ranging collection of fourteen essays is innovative in offering an extremely rich and multi-faceted portrait of this complex topic... makes a real contribution to show how terrorist brutality was expressed, encoded and schematized by the people involved in these dramatic events even before the violent actions became the object of rhetorical analysis.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 490

The Picture as Spectre in Diderot, Proust, and Deleuze
Thomas Baldwin
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2011

  • ‘Current critical debates on both spectrality and ekphrastic poetics are greatly enriched by Thomas Baldwin’s tightly woven and theoretically intricate study.’ — Margaret Topping, French Studies 67.1 (January 2013), 125

Dante the Lyric and Ethical Poet: Dante lirico e etico
Edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Martin McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2010

  • ‘The essay by Justin Steinberg deserves emphasis... it makes a significant contribution to modern Dante scholarship. In a well-argued and well-documented approach, Steinberg discusses Dante’s dreams in Vita nova and the author’s use of dreams to explore questions of truth and fiction.’ — Unn Falkeid, Renaissance Quarterly 64.1, Spring 2011, 157-58
  • ‘All in all, then, this is an impressive volume—a shade formidable, I would say, in respect of its user unfriendliness (acres of text on the page and a rather intrusive accumulation of translations and references in the body of the text)—but impressive for all that.’ — John Took, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 290-92 (full text online)

Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Literature, Doctrine, Reality
Zygmunt G. Barański
Selected Essays 6•17 February 2020

  • ‘Many will be familiar with Barański’s work, his distinctive voice and ability to interrogate some of the thorniest issues relating to Dante, medieval poetics and doctrine; but to have this voice sustained in one single volume is to witness a quite remarkable academic career and distinctive engagement with Dante.’ — Daragh O’Connell, Annali d'Italianistica 39, 2021, 414

Michel Foucault: Form and Power
Dan Beer
Legenda (General Series) •1 May 2002

  • ‘Beer's book is a dialogue with Foucault, including critiques of his arguments by Baudrillard and Derrida. It has been suggested that the seductive beauty of Foucault's language masks the frailty of some of his positions, and Beer provides close analysis of the stylistic strategies he deploys.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XXXIX, 2003, 465-6
  • ‘After Beer we can return to Foucault's texts with a new imagination and a new sensitivity to the force of his style.’ — Jeremy Carrette, Modern Language Review 99.2, 2004, 502-3 (full text online)

Laforgue, Philosophy, and Ideas of Otherness
Sam Bootle
Research Monographs in French Studies 54•25 May 2018

  • ‘This is the first full-length study of Laforgue to be published in English since Anne Holmes’s Jules Laforgue and Poetic Innovation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). For all that anglophone scholarship has contributed in the intervening twenty-five years to the critical picture of a poet best known for his pioneering vers libre, it has lacked the sustained depth and breadth of attention that Sam Bootle’s excellent monograph offers... Through its own openness to Laforgue’s intellectual eclecticism, this book offers a necessary and compelling account of a poet far more widely recognized for his formal experimentation than for his very particular brand of culture critique.’ — Claire White, French Studies 73.3, July 2019, 471-72 (full text online)
  • ‘Ecco qui la monografia di un giovane ricercatore incentrata sulla presenza della filosofia tedesca e orientale nella produ- zione di Jules Laforgue. Lo studio è così convincente che un suo capitolo, volto in lingua francese, è entrato a far parte di un recentissimo numero (2, 2017) della “Revue d’Histoire littéraire de la France” coordinato da Henri Scepi e dedicato a Laforgue, Poésie et Philosophie. A fine volume, l’indice dei nomi, concetti e titoli evi- denzia che, in questo luogo, l’indagine è di più ampio spettro, coinvolgendo sia l’opera in versi che l’opera in prosa di Jules Laforgue.’ — Alessandra Marangoni, Studi francesi 188, 2020, 383
  • ‘Bootle’s fine monograph brings us fresh and valuable perspec- tives on Laforgue’s infinitely intriguing poetry, prose, and, above all, philosophical engagement with the world.’ — Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 726-27 (full text online)

Artifice and Invention in the Spanish Golden Age
Edited by Stephen Boyd and Terence O'Reilly
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 3•1 November 2014

Anglo-German Interactions in the Literature of the 1890s
Patrick Bridgwater
Legenda (General Series) •1 August 1999

  • ‘The author is to be congratulated for shedding new light on a wide range of Anglo-German cross-currents... His study weaves a multi-faceted web of historical and inter-personal connections, and is at its best when it forges links between the approaches of different authors and diverse forms of art.’ — Susanne Stark, Modern Language Review 97.2, 2002, 523-4 (full text online)
  • ‘This well-documented volume provides new insights into the key social and cultural issues of the 1890s, including the truth and morality of artistic writing.’ — Crocker and Womack, The Year's Work in English Studies 2000, 532

Race and the Unconscious: Freudianism in French Caribbean Thought
Celia Britton
Research Monographs in French Studies 12•1 November 2002

  • ‘In this original, succinct, and highly relevant book, Celia Britton ... traces the various distortions and reformulations of Freudian thought within the Antillean context. ... The book combines intricate close reading with in-depth knowledge of the psychoanalytic field, and this brief but punchy sequence of arguments successfully points the way towards further questioning and research in a rich and complex area.’ — Jane Hiddleston, Modern Language Review 100.2, 2005, 515 (full text online)
  • ‘Fascinating essay ... Britton does not so much draw a conclusion as bring the argument to a point of (provisional) closure. But it is equally her triumph to be in a position to point to certain stable notions.’ — Belinda Jack, French Studies LVIII.3, 2004, 438-9
  • ‘A succinct, tightly-argued study... Britton's reading of this already much-interpreted and misinterpreted text [Peau noire, masques blancs] is complex and original.’ — Sam Haigh, Journal of Romance Studies 6.3, 2006, 127-35

Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard: On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, and Repetition
Mads Bunch
Germanic Literatures 13•3 April 2017

  • ‘The claim is that Dinesen’s reading of and interest in Kierkegaard are neglected within Dinesen research. Although various scholars have analysed certain texts in the light of Kierkegaard, I think Bunch is right. There has been no in-depth study of Kierkegaard’s significance for Dinesen prior to his book. Hence, [this book] is a valuable contribution to a more extensive understanding and documentation of the textual relation between the two Danish authors.’ — Tone Selboe, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 904-06 (full text online)

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

Renaissance Keywords
Edited by Ita Mac Carthy
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2013

  • ‘A thoughtful, well-written and engaging volume whose accessible presentation of wide-ranging but precise detail should appeal to the Renaissance specialist and the general reader alike.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.2, April 2014, 231
  • ‘These chapters share an approach, drawing insights from close attention to both dictionary definitions and uses of terms in different contexts, and thereby provide excellent examples of ‘word histories’.’ — Hugh Roberts, French Studies 68.2, April 2014, 241-42
  • ‘By bringing together intellectual history and philology in ways that are both rigorous and ambitious, the essays in Renaissance Keywords constitute a great contribution to the field of Renaissance and early modern studies. The book, however, transcends the limits of its field and offers anyone interested in the history of ideas important insights of the ways in which lan- guage in its ever-evolving nature determines ideas and worldviews.’ — Pablo Maurette, Modern Philology 112.3, February 2015, E231-33

Edoardo Sanguineti: Literature, Ideology and the Avant-Garde
Edited by Paolo Chirumbolo and John Picchione
Italian Perspectives 26•28 May 2013

  • ‘Chirumbolo and Picchione’s impressive volume represents a significant and timely addition to the field, which scholars of Sanguineti will want to follow and explore in the future.’ — Florian Mussgnug, Modern Language Review 111.1, January 2016, 268-70 (full text online)
  • ‘This dense but lucid collection makes a timely and valuable contribution to studies of Sanguineti's works and influence. The combination of critical and personal essays will make this volume particularly compelling to scholars interested in Sanguineti's legacy.’ — Mary Migliozzi, Forum Italicum 250-53
  • ‘A tre anni dalla scomparsa di Edoardo Sanguineti, Paolo Chirumbolo e John Picchione propongono questo interessantissimo volume dedicato al poeta genovese. I due curatori sono da annoverare fra i più prolifici ed attenti critici letterari sulla neoavanguardia italiana in Nord America... Un’autentica perla, un volume essenziale per chi volesse non solo occuparsi di uno dei guru dello sperimentalismo italiano, ma anche per chi intendesse affrontare il variegato mondo della neoavanguardia italiana con più ampio respiro.’ — Beppe Cavatorta, Annali d'Italianistica 32, 2014, 670-72

Force from Nietzsche to Derrida
Clare Connors
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2010

The Near and Distant God: Poetry, Idealism and Religious Thought from Hölderlin to Eliot
Ian Cooper
Legenda (General Series) •3 October 2008

  • ‘This is an intellectually distinguished, engagingly written and outstandingly original book, which succeeds admirably in its aim of tracing the close and continuous connection of lyric poetry, philosophical idealism and religious thought from Hölderlin to Eliot... Its achievement is as relevant to theology as it is to German Studies and deserves the widest possible readership.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 110
  • ‘A sophisticated example of how literary studies may benefit from approaches that are theologically and spiritually mindful.’ — Helena M. Tomko, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 512-13 (full text online)
  • ‘This study is densely written (something that should be applauded rather than criticized!) and cogently argued... Intellectually highly rewarding.’ — Rüdiger Görner, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 405-08
  • ‘He avoids the pitfall of many comparable studies, in which poems are merely mined for their philosophical content--a fate that especially Holderlin, Rilke, and Eliot have frequently suffered in the past. His readings of the poems emphasize the process of writing and reading--in these processes, transcendence can be experienced, and the promise of community be enacted. Cooper's fine analytical skills give us many fresh perspectives on a series of major poems.’ — Johannes Wich-Schwarz, Christianity and Literature Autumn 2010
  • ‘What seems like a huge and bold undertaking is impressively achieved... compelling and, at times, beautiful writing.’ — Carly McLaughlin, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 248, 2011, 166-67
  • ‘Cooper succeeds in establishing the centrality of theology to the work of Hölderlin, and in tracing the afterlife of Hölderlin's poetic religiosity he expands our awareness of the prehistory of the high modernist struggle to come to terms with Spirit.’ — Nathaniel Davis, Journal of Modern Literature 35.1, Fall 2011, 196-99

Dante and Epicurus: A Dualistic Vision of Secular and Spiritual Fulfilment
George Corbett
Italian Perspectives 25•28 May 2013

  • ‘George Corbett's book elegantly and lucidly addresses the relationship of Epicurean philosophy upon Dante's own ethical reasoning. As such, this work fills a gap left open not only in Dante studies, but within wider medieval studies as well, from which, as Corbett reminds us, Epicureanism has long been ignored. [...] While the book tackles issues of a highly philosophical nature, it does so consistently in a clear and accessible style. [...] Corbett's work will appeal not only to Dantists, but to scholars of philosophy, literature, and the Middle Ages, as well. As such, it is an outstanding book that proposes and skilfully realizes a truly ambitious project.’ — Lorenzo Valterza, Medium Aevum LXXXIII.2, 2014, 349-50
  • ‘George Corbett approfondisce il rapporto fra Dante e la filosofia epicurea alla luce di un approccio critico più ampio, volto a dimostrare la permanenza, nella Commedia, della visione dualistica dantesca.’ — Giulia Gaimari, L'Alighieri 43, 2014, 165-68
  • ‘Considered from the point of view of what Corbett’s book has to say about Dante and one of the—theologically speaking—more problematic spirits on his horizon, it is to be welcomed, its sense of Dante’s appreciation of an Epicurus notable for something other than mere sensuality but wedded, even so, to a species of mortalism making inevitably for his reprobation within the Christian scheme of things emerging from it both clearly and convincingly.’ — John Took, Speculum 89.2, April 2014, 466-68
  • ‘George Corbett writes with great clarity and logic, drawing on a wide range of resources from early commentators (among whom he moves with ease) and the whole of Dante’s œuvre to a host of modern Dante critics. Points of comparison and continuity rather than of palinodic rewriting are sought between the Commedia and the ‘minor works’, and the author is bold and confident in his challenges to various prevalent critical assumptions. The ambiguities surrounding Epicurus before and during Dante’s day are persuasively elucidated, with good, nuanced background on mediators such as Cicero, Augustine, and Albert the Great.’ — Jennifer Rushworth, Modern Language Review 109.3, July 2014, 821-22 (full text online)
  • ‘L'importante lavoro di George Corbett si propone di indagare in maniera esaustiva l'influenza esercitata dal pensiero filosofico epicureo nell'opera dantesca [...] l'autore si interroga su due questioni fondamentali: quali sono i testi che possono aver influenzato la ricezione di Dante dell'Epicureismo e in che modo il poeta riesce a rappresentare Epicuro e gli epicurei nelle sue opere.’ — Claudia Tardelli Terry, Italian Studies 69.3, November 2014, 449-50
  • ‘Corbett's book is well written, accurate, and rigorously argued. The thesis that Dante's Commedia presents a dualistic vision of the fulfilment of mankind is innovative and compelling for a new scholarly criticism of the Commedia. The first part on Dante's reception of Epicureanism is the most persuasive and ground-breaking; it shows how the reconstruction of Dante's sources is essential for understanding his reception of ancient literature and philosophy.’ — Filippo Gianferrari, Annali d'Italianistica 32, 2014, 593-95
  • ‘Stunningly readable with potent, clear argumentation, Corbett’s nonetheless highly academic presentation of Dante’s dualism in the context of the poet’s literary integration of the figure and philosophy of Epicurus reads like a page-turner. Furthermore, Corbett’s innovative methodological approach is cradled by a no less than masterful organization throughout the book. [...] The topic and breadth of the book, perhaps, lend themselves better to students and scholars versed well enough with the traditions of the philosophers, biblical exegetes and scholarly commentators that orbit so closely Dante’s works. Readers with a grasp of Latin will take double pleasure in reading volumes of quotes from their original sources as well as in their English translations. Corbett’s book, overall, is a must-have for the bookshelves of the committed dantista.’ — Elsie Emslie Stevens, Italica 41.4, 2014, 833-35
  • ‘George Corbett presenta un volume nel quale viene ripercorsa, con ampiezza e profondità di indagine, l’importante questione relativa ai rapporti fra Dante e l’epicureismo […] Il volume di Corbett si configura senza alcun dubbio, quindi, come un serio e notevole tentativo di far luce in modo esaustivo e corretto su un non irrilevante nodo problematico dell’universo filosofico e poetico dantesco, insieme punto d’arrivo di una lunga e ininterrotta tradizione esegetica e punto di partenza per nuovi, auspicabili interventi critici.’ — Armando Bisanti, Studi Medievali series 3 vol 56, 2015, 444-45

Forms of Thinking in Leopardi’s Zibaldone: Religion, Science and Everyday Life in an Age of Disenchantment
Paola Cori
Italian Perspectives 43•23 September 2019

  • ‘Paola Cori has come to a powerful and comprehensive synthesis of her research perspective with a monograph which was awarded the AAIS Prize for Italian Studies... The form of Cori’s book is therefore the perfect counterpart to its content, which focuses on the Zibaldone’s formal and conceptual complexity.’ — Martina Piperno, Modern Language Review 116.4, October 2021, 658-60 (full text online)

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

Sex in Imagined Spaces: Gender and Utopia from More to Bloch
Caitríona Ní Dhúill
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2010

  • ‘Ni Dhúill's study shines a bright light on the hitherto neglected importance of sex and gender questions in utopian societies. Sex In Imagined Spaces is a cogently argued, beautifully written, and highly original contribution to knowledge in utopia studies and beyond; it not only mobilizes important wider cultural developments for the analysis of literary texts, but also gives a brilliant gender-theoretical spin to the double function of utopian texts as vision and critique.’ — Anna Katharina Schaffner, Germanistik in Ireland 7 (2013), 228-30
  • ‘This excellent monograph tackles the concept of utopia by repositioning it within the fields of literature and creative practice examined through the lens of the gendered body.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 49.2 (2013)
  • ‘This is an excellent book which deals with the relationship between utopian desire, gender relations, and social outcome in a nuanced and intelligent way.’ — Peter Thompson, Modern Language Review 108.3, 2013, 948-49 (full text online)

The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent
Edited by Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 31•1 September 2016

  • ‘With new archival research, new areas of study, and an innovative approach, Italian Academies challenges preconceived ideas about academies and successfully demonstrates the fundamental role played by these associations in disseminating ideas, culture, innovation, and dissent in the early modern period.’ — Patrizia Bettella, Quaderni d'Italianistica 39.1, 2017, 265-68

Italy in Crisis: 1494
Edited by Jane Everson and Diego Zancani
Legenda (General Series) •1 November 2000

  • ‘The eight chapters are prefaced by a stimulating introduction, and rounded off by a helpful index: in all a splendid collection of original and scholarly essays.’ — Paul Diffley, Italian Studies LVII, 2002, 167-8
  • notice, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 62, 2000, 395

Standing at the Crossroads: Stories of Doubt in Renaissance Italy
Marco Faini
Italian Perspectives 58•22 April 2023

Dada as Text, Thought and Theory
Stephen Forcer
Research Monographs in French Studies 39•22 July 2015

  • ‘Stephen Forcer’s original, timely and impeccably researched monograph is an adventurous and therefore provocative attempt to combine close readings of verbal and visual Dada texts with an imaginative analytical conspectus of the ‘rich inner life’ of the Paris Lodge... Dada wisdom is finally reaching a large audience, both inside and outside universities, during a dürtiger Zeit when that unconventional commodity is becoming more behovely than ever.’ — Richard Sheppard, Journal of European Studies 46.1, 74-75
  • ‘This cogent and wide-ranging study... challenges the reader to reassess Dada as a far from simplistic phenomenon exerting a radical influence on contemporary culture.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.2, 2016, 235
  • ‘A perceptive reappraisal of the movement... Forcer’s study uncovers convincingly, through a close and sensitive study of diverse intersections, the semantic plurality and allusive density of Dada texts; and thus confirms his conclusion that, even when meaning appears to collapse, it ‘inevitably re-emerges, playfully and gloriously’.’ — Elza Adamowicz, Modern Language Review 111.4, October 2016, 1139-40 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a lively, incisive, and thought-provoking book substantially based on original archive work, which injects new and proliferating life into the study of Dada... With excellent English translations of quotations throughout, and well-chosen monochrome illustrations, the book is fully accessible to non-francophone readers and is an absolute must for anyone with a serious interest in Dada.’ — Andrew Rothwell, French Studies 71.1, Winter 2017, 133-34

Conceptions of the Absurd: From Surrealism to Chestov's and Fondane's Existential Thought
Ramona Fotiade
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2001

  • ‘Fotiade argues persuasively that the ideas of Chestov and Fondane form the basis of a tradition of dissident thought in the 1920s and beyond... an original and illuminating contribution to French intellectual history, a clearly organized and closely argued exploration of a neglected field.’ — Douglas Smith, French Studies LVII.3, 2003, 414-15

From Doubt to Unbelief: Forms of Scepticism in the Iberian World
Edited by Mercedes García-Arenal and Stefania Pastore
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 42•28 August 2019

  • ‘This outstanding volume brings together thirteen essays on scepticism and religious dissent in late medieval and early modern Spain, Portugal and Italy... The joint enterprise represented by this exceptional volume ‘has led the way to a variety of new panoramas and unexpected itineraries’ (14). Anyone prompted to pursue these further will find here an indispensable resource and an inspiring example.’ — Eamonn Rodgers, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.3, 2021, 479-80
  • ‘Scholars of early modern Europe will find much to draw upon in these two volumes [jointly reviewed was Fuchs and García-Arenal, eds, The Quest for Certainty in Early Modern Europe: From Inquisition to Inquiry, 1550–1700]. The strongest chapters focus on religious and theological issues of doubt and uncertainty, but we get many case studies in other areas of knowledge that found ways to navigate the murky waters of the early modern world. Most of the chapters will make fruitful material for graduate seminars and reading groups, but the books’ greatest merit is how well they work together both as individual volumes and as complementary conversations. Editors of collected volumes should take note.’ — Erudition and the Republic of Letters 7, 2022, 355-63 (María M. Portuondo)

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

Method and Variation: Narrative in Early Modern French Thought
Edited by Emma Gilby and Paul White
Legenda (General Series) •28 May 2013

  • ‘Overall, this is an engaging volume that usefully emphasizes the narrative methods and less scientific genres which underlie early modern French thought and its philosophical fictions.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.2, April 2014, 230-31
  • ‘This timely and important volume addresses the role of narration in revealing early modern French belief patterns... In demonstrating the range of ways in which early modern authors reconfigure and renegotiate narrative’s relationship to thought, argument, and proof, the contributors to this volume together add critical understanding to the complex articulation of fable, history, and argument in the early modern period.’ — Allison Stedman, French Studies 68.4, October 2014, 542-43

Sublime Worlds: Early Modern French Literature
Emma Gilby
Legenda (General Series) •7 December 2006

  • ‘In a book which deals with aspects of a certain literary experience, the presence of Pascal alongside Corneille and Boileau here may at first surprise. The overriding concern with cognition and models of communication, however, vindicates his inclusion, and indeed adds a richness to Gilby's already suggestive study... A sensitive, detailed and compelling treatment, challenging several idées reçues along the way.’ — James Ambrose, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 851-52 (full text online)
  • ‘Gilby's theory of the sublime as a movement stressing the horizontality of communication rather than the verticality of loftiness offers new insights and adds to earlier work on sublimity by Jules Brody and Marc Fumaroli.’ — C. J. Gossip, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 30.1, 2009, 49-50
  • ‘Gilby’s conception of the sublime is neatly mirrored in her own work, which offers a series of close, nuanced readings that in turn suggest greater insights into the century more generally.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011
  • ‘A compelling case for seeing the seventeenth-century French reception of the Longinian sublime as a broader, deeper, and more varied development than is commonly assumed.’ — Richard Scholar, French Studies 65.1, January 2011, 92-93

Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood
Edited by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos
Legenda (General Series) •4 March 2013

  • ‘This audacious volume is concerned with nothing less than the almost 3000-year metamorphosis of the concept of metamorphosis in the Western imaginary... A most compelling entry in the history of ideas.’ — Dan Curley, Bryn Mawr Classical Review online, 2014.09.41
  • ‘The volume is exciting, enjoyable as well as serious, and therefore not only suggestive for future research but also set to be useful in teaching. I would happily assign relevant portions of it in courses on classical traditions and receptions. Whether in the classroom or elsewhere, it deserves to reach a large audience.’ — Benjamin Eldon Stevens, American Journal of Philology 135.3, Fall 2014, 492-96

Samuel Butler against the Professionals: Rethinking Lamarckism 1860–1900
David Gillott
Studies In Comparative Literature 32•16 March 2015

  • ‘Gillott’s book provides a convincing and well-structured analysis of the work of the novelist, art historian and amateur scientist Samuel Butler in the late nineteenth-century British context, focus- ing in particular on his research on art and literature.’ — Cristiano Turbil, British Journal for the History of Science 49.2, 2006, 300-01

Diderot and the Body
Angelica Goodden
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2001

  • ‘Vorremmo sottolineare anche la bellezza del titolo del volume di A. Goodden, titolo elegante nella sua apparente essenzialità ma al tempo stesso anticpatore di uno studio richissimo e interessante.’ — Paola Perazzolo, Studi francesi 139, 2003, 174
  • ‘Welcome, in that it deals comprehensively with a subject which has lurked, half-hidden, in many previous studies of Diderot, often noticed but never fully confronted... Sends one back to grapple yet again with this most protean of philisophes.’ — D. J. Adams, French Studies LVII.2, 2003, 236-7
  • ‘A richly interesting study, written with Angelica Goodden's characteristic vigour, which illuminates both Diderot's works and a wide range of eighteenth-century literature and thought.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 104
  • ‘An eminently readable, coherent and cogent volume which captures the profundity, wisdom, humanity, excesses, sensuality, and frailty of Diderot, both the man and the writer.’ — Roseann Runte, French Review 77/4, March 2004, 783

The Backward Look: Memory and the Writing Self in France 1580-1920
Angelica Goodden
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2000

  • ‘Reads like an essay by Montaigne... an ambitious and thought-provoking study.’ — Michéle Bissiére, French Review 76.3, 2003, 592-3
  • ‘It is salutary to read a thoughtful, level-headed and well-informed account of the representation of the self in French writing... there is no doubting the depth, range and persuasiveness of the thesis advanced.’ — Anthony Strugnell, French Studies LVII.3, 2003, 428-30

Regarding Lost Time: Photography, Identity, and Affect in Proust, Benjamin, and Barthes
Katja Haustein
Legenda (General Series) •30 January 2012

  • ‘Katja Haustein’s monograph charts new territory in the expanding study of autobiographical writing in the light of photography... this volume will no doubt be of great benefit to specialists of these three seminal authors, as well as to those working in comparative studies.’ — Kathrin Yacavone, French Studies 67.2 (April 2013), 271-72
  • ‘Katja Haustein undertakes a titanic task: to bring together three bulwarks of twentieth-century intellect, each one so seminal in their own right that even the thought of combining them in one study would seem quixotic. Haustein not only accomplishes the task, but manages to bring out a genuinely comparative account... it is a very useful book to have read, and one which, I am certain, I will return to again and again.’ — Eleni Papargyriou, Comparative Critical Studies 10, 2013, 407-09
  • ‘This book contains several beautiful, thoughtfully chosen illustrations, and is a useful source of information about scholarship in German on Proust... a significant and stimulating contribution to the scholarship on these three important writers.’ — Áine Larkin, Modern Language Review 110.1, January 2015, 228-29 (full text online)

Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de siècle
Richard Hibbitt
Studies In Comparative Literature 9•24 May 2006

  • ‘This study explores, with great erudition, the hitherto unknown faces of the dilettante, revealing an intriguing complexity. Hibbitt succeeds in showing how this "empty figure" can, thanks to his openness, mirror the concerns of different times and cultures.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies 224)

Reinventing Community: Identity and Difference in Late Twentieth-Century Philosophy and Literature in French
Jane Hiddleston
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2005

  • ‘This is a lucid, cogently-argued work that is both extensive and focused. As such it represents an important contribution to the urgent discussion of community and the fraught relationship between "singular-plural" beings and the collectivities they form.’ — Nicole Simek, French Review 80.3, 2007, 670-71

Frantz Fanon: Literature and Invention
Jane Hiddleston
Research Monographs in French Studies 66•13 September 2022

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

Metaphor in European Philosophy after Nietzsche: An Intellectual History
Andrew Hines
Studies In Comparative Literature 54•28 September 2020

  • ‘This monograph is exactly as its title would suggest: a lively intellectual history of metaphor in (mostly) twentieth-century European philosophy... does the impossible, succeeding very clearly in defining and outlining the history of metaphor (which [Hines] does comprehensively and deeply, I might add).’ — Christopher O’Hara, Forum for Modern Language Studies 58.1, January 2022, 127-28 (full text online)
  • ‘Throughout the book, [Hines] suggests that studying the metaphors of ideologies would be an apt use case — he cites examples from The Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer’s study of Third Reich rhetoric — yet he can only hint at how exactly this is to be done. As a historical result, Hines has produced an excellent overview over the development of metaphor theory, and has assembled a canon whose surprising star, Hans Blumenberg, is also still the least known in the Anglosphere. Not everyone will agree with this selection — nor with the pivotal position Nietzsche has in it — but for any future study of metaphor theories, this book will be indispensable.’ — Hannes Bajohr, Contributions to the History of Concepts 17.2, Winter 2022, 123–27 (full text online)

Women, Genre and Circumstance: Essays in Memory of Elizabeth Fallaize
Edited by Margaret Atack, Diana Holmes, Diana Knight and Judith Still
Legenda (General Series) •1 June 2012

  • ‘Like the woman to whom it pays tribute, and whose haunting gaze looks out at us from its cover, this volume of essays combines intellectual rigour with humanity, serious purpose with humour, depth of insight with lightness of touch.’ — Julia Waters, Modern and Contemporary France 20.4 (November 2012), 505-06
  • ‘A powerful and moving reminder of the lineaments and achievements of [Elizabeth Fallaize's] scholarly work. Equally, as critical explorations of a variety of nineteenth- and twentieth-century narrative artefacts and practices, [these essays] are a pleasure to read, combining to create a collection that is an academic delight and would certainly have delighted the woman to whom it is dedicated.’ — Alex Hughes, French Studies 67.2 (April 2013), 294-95
  • ‘The chapters which form this scholarly homage... keep the dialogue open with a scholar, teacher, feminist and mentor who spent her life engaging with French literature. Yet, each contribution, particularly those of Michèle le Doeuff, Ursula Tidd and Diana Holmes, offers intellectual stimulation in its own right.’ — France Grenaudier-Klign, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 34.2, 2014, 130-32

Symbol and Intuition: Comparative Studies in Kantian and Romantic-Period Aesthetics
Edited by Helmut Hühn and James Vigus
Legenda (General Series) •21 December 2012

  • ‘Skilfully planned and structured, the volume offers original research on less familiar material while it lucidly covers most of the essential formulations of the symbol from the late eighteenth century onwards, thus speaking to readers of different backgrounds... It is Hühn and Vigus’s broad conception of the subject that ensures the collection’s originality and secures its unique place among the increasing studies of the symbol.’ — Stephanie Dumke, Angermion 7, 2014, 191-93
  • ‘This rich volume successfully inducts its readers into key aesthetic-philosophical debates around 1800, while at the same time breaking new ground by extending our understanding of the variations and functions of ‘symbol’ and ‘intuition’ within the works of individual writers and thinkers. It also makes meaningful comparisons and connections between texts that have not been discussed together before. The editors have drawn together a wide range of international scholars from the fields of German, English, and philosophy into a timely discussion.’ — James Hodkinson, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 786-88 (full text online)

Scenographies of Perception: Sensuousness in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, and Proust
Christian Jany
Studies In Comparative Literature 45•14 May 2019

  • ‘Christian Jany’s Scenographies of Perception situates itself on well-traversed philosophical territory, but with a freshness unusual in a volume devoted to longstanding issues in the history of philosophy and theories of poetry and literature... A thought-provoking, cross-disciplinary account of the relationship between thought and perception that ought to appeal to students of German idealism and ro- manticism and their aftermath in the 20th century, and in a way that stays admirably close to the relevant texts and the concerns that animate them.’ — James D. Reid, Monatshefte 112.3, 2020, 555-57

Chivalry, Academy, and Cultural Dialogues: The Italian Contribution to European Culture
Edited by Stefano Jossa and Giuliana Pieri
Italian Perspectives 37•19 December 2016

  • ‘An interesting aspect is the rhythmical alternation of the contributions, organized in an almost Dantesque numerological order. Each section counts six chapters and is opened by an extraordinarily distinguished scholar [...] discussing challenging topics that escape traditional frames of literary studies: vocal transmissions of Petrarch’s verse, Camillo’s theater of memory, and Berni’s Rifacimento of Boiardo’s Innamorato between oral and written language... These eminent scholars and their fifteen fellow authors form a remarkable group shot of different generations of Italianists between two continents.’ — Alessandro Giammei, Renaissance Quarterly 71.9, October 2018, 1196-98
  • ‘This broad and enterprising survey is provided by some of the foremost names in early modern Italian Studies... Though the volume is ambitious and highly diverse, editors Stefano Jossa and Giuliana Pieri have ensured a smooth transition of thought between the essays, and the structure of the book itself is instinctive and accessible... A substantial contribution to early modern Italian Studies, and scholars from a range of disciplines will find it a valuable and thought-provoking read.’ — Lucy Rayfield, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 150-51 (full text online)

Voices and Veils: Feminism and Islam in French Women's Writing and Activism
Anna Kemp
Research Monographs in French Studies 29•6 September 2010

  • ‘Voices and Veils is an impressive evaluation of the fraught relationship between Islam, Muslim women, and French feminism... invaluable to students, teachers, and activists alike who desire a deeper understanding of postcolonial French society, of Islamic feminism, of colonial constructions of the Muslim woman, and, finally, of neo-imperial constructions which seek to delineate Muslim women living in the West.’ — Sophie Smith, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1168-69 (full text online)
  • ‘It is often said that we write the books we want to read. Anna Kemp has written a book I would have liked to have written... Both specialists and beginners will learn tremendously from reading this concise and clearly written interdisciplinary study, which should be required reading in courses on French and Francophone literature, migration, world literature, Middle Eastern studies, European studies, and women’s studies. Any serious university library will want to include it in its collection.’ — Anne Donadey, Contemporary Women's Writing 5:3, November 2011, 257-58

Humanizing Childhood in Early Twentieth-Century Spain
Anna Kathryn Kendrick
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 30•7 January 2020

  • ‘So liegt ein reich recherchiertes Buch vor, das wie ein Feuerwerk der Informationen, Deutungen und auch Andeutungen erscheint... Die einzelnen Kapitel und Abschnitte zu Lerntheorien, Spielzeug, Theater, Kinderzeichnungen und Intelligenztests können als wichtige Beiträge zu neuen Entwicklungen einer vergleichenden und transnationalen Kindheitsgeschichte gelten und sind als solche zweifellos lesenswert.’ — Martina Winkler, H-Soz-Kult 11 January 2021
  • ‘Humanizing Childhood explores the debates and practices surrounding the emerging discipline of the study of childhood in early twentieth-century Spain. Linked to the transnational education reform movement in Europe and the United States, artists, poets, educators, and philosophers in Spain developed new frameworks to understand the “world of the child” in order to guide children to their full human potential... The book provides a welcome addition to the relatively undeveloped field of the Spanish history of childhood.’ — Pamela Beth Radcliff, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 15.1, Winter 2021, 165-67 (full text online)
  • ‘A carefully documented celebration of early twentieth-century Spanish humanism and its positive impact on childhood representation and education. Spanish teachers, intellectuals, and artists pressed for a science of childhood which was constructed from advances in science, art, literature, and culture, centred on the dynamic and creative aspects of the holistic child in which mind, body, and spirit were viewed as one.’ — David Foshee, Modern Language Review 116.4, October 2021, 668-69 (full text online)
  • ‘Humanizing Childhood in Early Twentieth-Century Spain is an impressive achievement. It not only constitutes a major contribution to the field of child development and paedological teaching and learning (especially with respect to the New Education movement and its Spanish representatives), but it also opens a window to how the fundamental question of human nature was addressed and problematized throughout Spain during a period of unprecedented social change... An excellent book with broad appeal.’ — Nicolás Fernández-Medina, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 2021 (full text online)
  • ‘Definitivamente, el gran valor de este libro es el esfuerzo intelectual que hace la autora para identificar conexiones significativas dentro del amplio tema de la infancia entre la historia de la ciencia, la historia de la educación, la historia cultural, la historia literaria y la historia de arte, entre otros.’ — Gabriela Ossenbach, Boletín de Historia de la Educación 2021
  • ‘El libro brilla por su extensa curiosidad, las enormes y variadas inquietudes que demuestra y su forma de transformarlas en indicios para el análisis de un tema complejo y significativo ... Se trata, en definitiva, de un libro cuya mirada global a las inquietudes, debates y reflexiones sobre la infancia y la educación debería ser inspiradora dentro de las polémicas y experimentos educativos que dominan el presente. Un libro de primer orden, de arquitectura compleja y sugerente, que demuestra gran erudición y amplitud de miras, una singular capacidad de análisis y formulación de hipótesis, riqueza conceptual, y una densidad no exenta de agilidad narrativa y amenidad. Un libro de los que, lejos del frecuente sabor metálico de las publicaciones urgentes, deja el sabor de la tradición anglosajona de las obras bien reposadas.’ — Álvaro Ribagorda, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 16, 2022, 725-30 (full text online)

Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean
Edited by Neil Kenny, Richard Scholar and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016

  • ‘Montaigne in Transit proves one of the finest volumes on this overworked author... In a reflective Afterword, Ian Maclean celebrates the scholarly exchanges out of which this volume grew and the generosity inherent in intellectual work. Another aspect that ties these contributions together lies in how the authors foreground the practice of close reading. Such patience with ‘slow’ reading is a welcome change from more ambitious quantifiable, contextualizing, and politicizing forms of criticism that currently dominate the field. The contributors intelligently defend their choice not as an antidote or alternative to these other approaches but as a needed counterweight and complement.’ — George Hoffmann, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 658-59 (full text online)
  • ‘In a reading of Montaigne’s classical allusions in ‘Sur des Vers de Virgile’, Terence Cave finds the essayist resurrecting the dead: ‘The quotations from Virgil and Lucretius are haptic, erotic; they come to life, become bodies. And their life flows palpably over into Montaigne’s prose.’ Cave’s is the first of several essays in the wonderful collection Montaigne in Transit to explore metaphors for Montaigne’s thought and quotation practice, and to evaluate how we study Montaigne’s relation to other texts.’ — Peter Auger, Translation and Literature 27, 2019, 353-60 (full text online)
  • ‘In sum, the journey through these essays is well worth the effort and strongly recommended to seasoned specialists and fellow travelers interested in the historical development of learned culture in Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. This reviewer wishes them a bon voyage!’ — Michael Wolfe, Sixteenth Century Journal 49.3, 2018, 885-87

Rome Eternal: The City As Fatherland
Guy Lanoue
Italian Perspectives 32•8 June 2015

The Law of Poetry: Studies in Hölderlin’s Poetics
Charles Lewis
Germanic Literatures 18•23 September 2019

  • ‘[D]as zweite Kapitel [erschließt] Neuland: Dass Kleanthes’ Hymne an Zeus für die Eigentümlichkeit des anrufenden Gestus der Ode Natur und Kunst formativ gewesen sein könnte, stellt einen eindrücklichen Befund dar (33, 42 f., 55). Aus den produktiven Differenzen zur Hymne leitet Lewis anschaulich jene Kritik her, die Hölderlins poetologische Ode vollzieht, wenn sie die Anbetung Jupiters an dessen Eingedenken seiner Herkunft knüpft (43 f.). ... Lewis’ Studie beleuchtet durch innovative Ansätze die selbstreflexive Gestaltung poetischer Formen, wie Hölderlins Werk sie zeigt, und nähert sich so dem im Titel exponierten ‘poetischen Gesetz’.’ — Lisa Memmeler, Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 42, 2021, 325-328
  • ‘The achievements of the first part of Lewis’s monograph are complemented by a second part consisting of a new translation into English of both Hölderlin’s “Sophocles-Anmerkungen” and his fragment on “[d]ie Bedeutung der Tragödien,” along with extensive notes contextualizing Hölderlin’s interpretive gestures within his broader œuvre as well as within current debates in classical philology. In this respect, Lewis’s translations mediate not only between Hölderlin’s German and modern English, but also between a poetic commentary from the early nineteenth century and contemporary scholarship, continuing the “poetic logic” that he traces in Hölderlin, whose precise formulations also open to other voices before and after “his” time. The proximity of Lewis’s English rendition to Hölderlin’s German, as well as his erudite commentaries, will also make his translations a resource for future scholars and readers of Hölderlin.’ — Kristina Mendicino, Monatshefte 113.4, 2021, 688-691

Comparative Encounters between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi: Rationality, Cosmology and Ethics
Xiaofan Amy Li
Transcript 4•1 July 2015

  • ‘This intelligent book raises important issues about comparative literature at its most challenging... All three thinkers are concerned with expression and performativity rather than with self-justification. The justification of this three-part comparison is clearly in the fluidity of thinking and its non-limitation.’ — Mary Ann Caws, French Studies 70.2, April 2016, 278-79
  • ‘The philosophical, rather than literary approach undertaken here offers valuable and well-founded insights into enduring modes of thought and existence.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.4, October 2016, 473-74

Unamuno’s Theory of the Novel
C. A. Longhurst
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 1•1 July 2014

  • ‘A highly illuminating exploration regarding Unamuno’s views on narrative fiction that pays attention to the pervasiveness of elements referring to the physical and mental worlds, the author, the word, the reader, the person, the double and philosophical investigations.’ — Anna Vives, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 78, 2018, 193-94