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)

Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence
Cecilia Muratori
Italian Perspectives 46•28 September 2020

  • ‘The meticulously researched study of the generation and Renaissance receptions of Porphyry's On Abstinence in Cecilia Muratori's Renaissance Vegetarianism is well worth attention from Romanticists, alongside the Early Modern scholars, Classicists, and Animal Studies scholars that will comprise its main audience... Literal and figurative translations of ethical, philosophical, and dietary ideas upon vegetarianism and veganism connect ancient and Early Modern thought in Muratori's admirable study, with glimpses of Thomas Taylor and Shelley suggesting the future of Porphyry's reception in the Romantic period.’ — Amanda Blake Davis, The Coleridge Bulletin 57, Summer 2021, 141-46
  • ‘Muratori’s work provides us not only with an overview of philosophical thinking on vegetarianism from ancient authors to their reception by Renaissance but also with interesting keys to understand the issues that worried intellectuals of those times. Her analysis gives the main clues of the reception of Porphyry’s work and shows how crucial it was for the evolution of vegetarian thinking that is still strongly present in our days. The rigor of the research and the excellent way the contents are presented with a simple but accurate drafting make this work accessible and fascinating for scholars as well for curious readers.’ — Monica Durán Mañas, Mediterranea 7, 2022 (full text online)
  • ‘The most celebrated work on animals to emerge from ancient philosophy, Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Killing Animals, argues at length against the Stoics that animals have reason or “inner logos,” in part on the basis of their behavior but also on the basis of the claim that some animals can understand and produce language, or “outer logos.” And this was one of those texts that really was recovered and read avidly in the Renaissance. Just how avidly, and with what consequences, is shown by Cecilia Muratori’s Renaissance Vegetarianism, a wide-ranging, fascinating, and frequently entertaining survey of ideas about animals in this period.’ — Peter Adamson, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Published online, 2023 (full text online)
  • ‘To add to the many merits of Muratori’s accomplishment, the book includes a bibliography that is comprehensive as well as carefully selected. The index of names and subjects is thorough and extremely helpful. The many philosophical discussions never read stiltedly and are always recounted in a thought-provoking and engaging style. Above all, this tour de force on the history of vegetarianism makes the reader reflect on a central question that remains unanswered to this day: can a being that is sentient and rational be legitimately consumed and turned into food?’ — E. Giada Capasso, Modern Language Review 118.3, July 2023, 403-05 (full text online)

Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy
Eugenio Refini
Italian Perspectives 48•22 January 2023

Interpreting and Judging Petrarch’s Canzoniere in Early Modern Italy
Edited by Maiko Favaro
Italian Perspectives 49•10 December 2021

  • ‘Angesichts des wenig bekannten Textkorpus stellt Favaros Sammelband eine wichtige Bereicherung der Petrarca-Forschung der letzten Jahre dar. Auf der einen Seite wirft das Buch die Frage auf, inwieweit der Begriff des Petrarkismus für die aktuelle Diskussion noch fruchtbar sein kann. Auf der anderen Seite erweist sich Petrarca als eine Funktion, die die Literaturwissenschaft dazu anregt, das Textkorpus zu erweitern, um im Dialog mit anderen Disziplinen auch sonst vernachlässigte Diskurse zu berücksichtigen. Wie Interpreting and judging Petrarch’s Canzoniere in early modern Italy zeigt, ist die Petrarca-Funktion nicht nur in der Lage, wesentliche Teile der italienischen Literaturgeschichte zusammenzufassen, sondern auch neue Perspektiven auf die italienische Kulturgeschichte zu eröffnen.’ — Nicolas Longinotti, Germanische-Romanische Monatsschrift 74.1, 2024, 115-17
  • ‘Favaro’s volume is a good place to start to understand the critical phenomena associated with the reception, study, and influence of the Renaissance’s refashioned Canzoniere.’ — H. Wayne Storey, Renaissance and Reformation 46.2, Spring 2024, 216-19 (full text online)

Venetian Inscriptions: Vernacular Writing for Public Display in Medieval and Renaissance Venice
Ronnie Ferguson
Italian Perspectives 50•26 July 2021

  • ‘The rigorous standards of the author’s nearly decade-long project will certainly satisfy professional historians, but lay readers too will find themselves thoroughly engaged by the manner in which he uses each inscription vividly to evoke multiple aspects of Venice’s social, religious, cultural and political life, as well as the characters of some remarkable individuals.’ — Roderick Conway Morris, Times Literary Supplement 21 January 2022
  • ‘A short review cannot do justice to the rich array of insights and ideas that thread through this fascinating book, nor can it reflect the dedication and time that were needed to compile the catalogue. Ranging from the familiar to the seemingly unnoticed, these inscriptions add myriad fragments to the enormous jigsaw of the townscape of late medieval and Renaissance Venice.’ — Deborah Howard, Burlington Magazine 165, February 2023, 207-08
  • ‘The Italian Perspectives series, founded by Zygmunt Barański and Laura Lepschy in 1998, reaches its half-century in impressive fashion with this outstanding work of scholarship... As well as making a major contribution to epigraphy, the volume includes a wealth of information on the urban fabric, society, culture, and language that will make it an invaluable resource for Venetian Studies during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 258-60 (full text online)

Classical Comedy 1508-1786: A Legacy from Italy and France
Richard Andrews
Italian Perspectives 55•20 October 2022

  • ‘An encyclopedic contribution to the history of comedy, with a particular focus on the transformation of comedy in Paris, where the greatest playwrights preserved the genre’s positive vision and harnessed the vitality of the Italian “Arte” to create their more serious comedies of character... The “Analyses” section is particularly valuable. It is divided between technical questions and plot or character issues, and the technical discussions, informed by Andrews extraordinary knowledge and deep understanding of how comedy works, are outstanding.’ — 552-54, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Laurie Shepard

Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy and Beyond: Materiality, Paratexts and Interpretative Strategies
Edited by Guyda Armstrong, Simon A. Gilson and Federica Pich
Italian Perspectives 56•22 January 2023

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

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)

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)

St Teresa of Ávila: Her Writings and Life
Edited by Terence O'Reilly, Colin Thompson and Lesley Twomey
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 19•10 September 2018

  • ‘The variety of topics and approaches in these essays, and the erudition and rigour of their authors, ensures that this volume represents an invaluable contribution to scholarship on St Teresa of Avila and will serve as a touchstone for future work on this saint and, more generally, on religious writing in the period.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.4, October 2019, 498-99 (full text online)
  • ‘Readers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds will find this collection fruitful and accessible, and scholars who are unfamiliar with Spanish will find faithful translations... The volume commemorates the five-hundredth anniversary of Teresa’s birth, but its imaginative, far-reaching perspectives on her life and legacy show that there is still ample appetite and space for future Teresian scholarship.’ — Catherine Maguire, Hispanic Research Journal 20.4, 2019, 409-10 (full text online)
  • ‘The contributors [...] deepen our understanding of Teresa by noting previously-overlooked sources and influences and emphasizing her theological contributions, which carry potential relevance in spiritual discussions today. As Thompson notes, in Teresa’s writings we encounter her not as an otherworldly being, but a person to whom modern-day readers can relate. The essays in this volume allow us further access to the human experiences, resultant insights and immediate legacy of one of Spain’s most famous saints.’ — Teresa Hancock-Parmer, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.2, 2020, 269-70

The Rise of Spanish American Poetry 1500-1700: Literary and Cultural Transmission in the New World
Edited by Rodrigo Cacho Casal and Imogen Choi
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 22•23 April 2019

  • ‘En conjunto, The Rise of Spanish American Poetry supone una extraordinaria selección de aportaciones al estudio de los textos coloniales y sus relaciones culturales en un contexto transatlántico.’ — Víctor Sierra Matute, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.6, 2020, 1070-1071
  • ‘La publicación no sólo resulta novedosa por la articulación multidisciplinaria de sus aproximaciones, sino por incorporar nuevas e interesantes interpretaciones... Sin duda, esta publicación constituye una aportación para el hispanismo que establece nuevas vías de interpretación dignas de ser atendidas y continuadas. Valga mencionar la hermosa factura del volumen y la esmerada edición, en la que el puñado de erratas detectadas no minimiza sus enormes aportaciones.’ — Andrés Iñigo Silva, Creneida 8, 2020, 394-400
  • ‘Some of the strongest essays draw attention to authors, texts or topics that have for the most part received limited attention from scholars. The range of subjects covered is noteworthy and the editors and contributors deserve praise for their ability to bring into the realm of poetic signification issues as diverse as exploration, evangelization, natural disasters, ideological debates, literacy, humanism, print culture, theology, music theory, humor, Jesuit edu- cation, historiography, mourning, astrology, piracy or racialized discourses.’ — Emiro Martínez-Osorio, Colonial Latin American Review 29.4, 2020, 662-64 (full text online)
  • ‘La proposition portée par Rodrigo Cacho, Imogen Choi et les onze contributeurs du volume présente, en définitive, de multiples mérites. Dans son approche de la poésie moderne, d’abord, elle promeut une lecture historique des corpus qui cherche et met en valeur les mécanismes d’hybridité depuis un regard résolument comparatiste entre les études hispanistes et les études américanistes. Dès lors, elle tire parti de la variété et de la variabilité idéologique et de positionnement politique des poètes et des poèmes plutôt que de l’ignorer en la réduisant à l’une ou l’autre des positions antagonistes. Le volume resitue aussi avec soin et de façon systématique les corpus abordés dans le contexte social et pragmatique de leur composition, dans leur lien avec ce que l’on pourrait appeler les usages de la poésie – y compris le véhicule musical, si rarement abordé dans les travaux des philologues. Ainsi la poésie peut-elle servir tout à la fois à édifier, à louer ou à décrédibiliser l’action des contemporains. L’ensembl’ — Aude Plagnard, Bulletin Hispanique 124.1, 2022, 365-69

The Art of Cervantes in Don Quixote: Critical Essays
Edited by Stephen Boyd, Trudi L. Darby and Terence O'Reilly
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 27•23 September 2019

  • ‘El libro constituye pues, en mi opinión, un aporte significativo y novedoso del cervantismo británico para el estudio y la reevaluación de la obra maestra cervantina.’ — Ruth Fine, Hispanic Research Journal 21.4, 2020, 463-66 (full text online)
  • ‘A welcome addition to the libraries of Cervantes scholars.’ — John T. Cull, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.4, 2021, 667-68

Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis: Góngora, Camargo, Sor Juana
Luis Castellví Laukamp
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 38•7 January 2020

  • ‘Con este volumen, Castellví Laukamp presenta una nueva manera de estudiar la poesía del virreinato [...] Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis: Góngora, Camargo, Sor Juana crea un museo de papel compuesto por poemas y por imágenes de la temprana edad moderna.’ — Conxita Domènech, Revista Iberoamericana 87.274, Spring 2021, 360-62
  • ‘Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis […] es una obra excelente por el profundo y original estudio que ofrece sobre las posibilidades expresivas de la écfrasis, el sobresaliente conocimiento de la obra de los autores estudiados, la adecuada estructuración, la riqueza de fuentes y la claridad expositiva.’ — Lizbeth Souza-Fuertes, Hispania 104.1, March 2021, 125-126 (full text online)
  • ‘Castellví's book is extensively documented in the critical bibliography and is eruditely positioned between literature and art [...] The documentary and pictorial apparatus supports this work, which undoubtedly aims to position itself as a landmark on the subject.’ — Laura Yadira Munguía Ochoa, Hipogrifo 9.1, 2021, 1369-72 (full text online)
  • ‘The attention to detail and the bibliographical scope of this book is noteworthy. so is the ability to develop cogent arguments that gain momentum towards the final section of each chapter... this is a well-contextualized, generous book that proves how early modern poets in spanish, and the poetics they adhered to, were not hampered by geographical borders and cannot be by academic ones.’ — Antonio J. Arraiza-Rivera, Bulletin of the Comediantes 72.2, 2020, 163-65
  • ‘Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis de Castellví Laukamp constituye una aportación de primer orden en el ámbito de la poesía barroca hispánica del que podrán disfrutar especialistas y aficionados. Su dimensión transatlántica y su diseño transgenérico [...] permiten al autor ofrecer una mirada fresca y erudita a un tiempo sobre los grandes poemas que analiza.’ — Martín Zulaica López, Rilce 37.2, 2021, 885-91
  • ‘Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis is an exquisitely written and illustrated book […] Turning to a transatlantic vision of the baroque, this book clearly shows that Gongorism in Viceregal Latin America was an instrument to think and to create with liberty. Written with subtlety and enargeia, this thoughtful volume provides important new insights into Góngora, Camargo and Sor Juana.’ — Frederick de Armas, Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 44.3, 2022, 784-87 (full text online)
  • ‘Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis constitutes an outstanding contribution to the interpretation of the three poems it studies. Castellví Laukamp’s command of art history, visual studies, early modern poetics, and the classical tradition enable him to craft astute and compelling readings. He is a widely read, learned, and clear writer’ — Felipe Valencia, Colonial Latin American Review 31.3, 463-65 (full text online)
  • ‘A complex but rewarding study, Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis recognizes Camargo and Sor Juana as both followers of Góngora and poetic innovators in their own right.’ — Elizabeth Blakemore, Forum for Modern Language Studies 58.3, 2022, 406 (full text online)

The Marvellous and the Miraculous in María de Zayas
Sander Berg
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 40•23 September 2019

Translating Petrarch's Poetry: L’Aura del Petrarca from the Quattrocento to the 21st Century
Edited by Carole Birkan-Berz, Guillaume Coatalen and Thomas Vuong
Transcript 8•17 February 2020

  • ‘Ranging through five centuries of translations, adaptations and imitations of Petrarch, the father of Humanism, this transcultural, transdisciplinary study considers the echoes of this major figure, whose reach goes beyond borders, eras and literary genres to resonate singularly into our times and in our own resonating ears.’ — Robert Sheppard, Pages 16 September 2020
  • ‘Translating Petrarch’s Poetry is a must-read book for anybody interested in the spread of Petrarch’s poetry in the Western world (and beyond) throughout modernity. It collects very thorough essays dealing with this theme in always original and engaging manners from a variety of modern critical standpoints.’ — Enrico Minardi, Annali d'Italianistica 38, 2020, 455-459
  • ‘As its title suggests, this volume covers both “translating” in a conventional sense and freer, sometimes distanced, responses that are nevertheless redolent of Petrarch’s “aura” or distinctive atmosphere and of his portrayal of his beloved. By integrating a wide gamut of approaches on the part of academics from different disciplines and of poets, the collection of case studies presented here illustrates very effectively the endlessly imaginative ways in which Petrarch’s poetry has been transformed and repurposed across time.’ — Brian Richardson, Speculum 96.4, October 2021, 1153-54 (full text online)
  • ‘This collection of fifteen essays by scholars and writers from a range of countries brings to bear on Petrarch recent interest not only in translation as normally conceived but also in reformulations and fragmentations of the original and its appropriation in other media, and in the roles translations and other responses play and have played socially and culturally.’ — Peter Hainsworth, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 505-07 (full text online)

Hamlet Translations: Prisms of Cultural Encounters across the Globe
Edited by Márta Minier and Lily Kahn
Transcript 16•10 December 2021

  • ‘This is a rich and valuable anthology about a fascinating topic. It should be useful not just to scholars of translation, but also to research on the play in general, as each of these iterations teaches us about this strange and manifold tragedy.’ — Michael Saenger, Translation Studies advance publication online (full text online)

Poetics, Performance and Politics in French and Italian Renaissance Comedy
Lucy Rayfield
Transcript 18•23 February 2022

  • ‘[Rayfield] provides in-depth socio-cultural and cross-cultural context. She has contributed an unusual study of the very small world of French humanist comedy, stimulatingly expanding it both from the inside and from the outside, schoolboys, polygraphs, and printers brushing elbows with French royals and wealthy Florentines.’ — Corinne Noirot, H-France 23 (May 2023), no. 86