A 'New' Woman in Verga and Pirandello: From Page to Stage
Enza De Francisci
Italian Perspectives 40•30 September 2018

  • ‘Effectively demonstrates that the two Sicilian writers, conventionally thought of as patriarchal figures, have, in their dramatic works, an affinity with the emerging ‘new woman’.’ — Mary Ann Frese Witt, Modern Language Review 115.2, 2020, 470-71 (full text online)

(Un)veiling Bodies: A Trajectory of Chilean Post-Dictatorship Documentary
Elizabeth Ramírez-Soto
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 20•23 September 2019

  • ‘Estas reflexiones finales apuntan a que nos en-contramos ante una obra que no solo está llama-da a convertirse en lugar de paso obligado para investigaciones posteriores sobre el documental chileno contemporáneo inserto en el devenir de las políticas del pasado y la memoria, sino que ofrece intersticios para lecturas productivas en otros ámbitos y periodos.’ — María Luisa Ortega, Secuencias 51, 2020, 178-80
  • ‘Impeccably documented and researched... the book works with over 100 films (an impressive corpus) and includes a filmography that will undoubtedly serve as an important resource for students and scholars... The book also rescues for/from the archive a vast group of nearly forgotten directors and films that open the reader’s mind to appreciate the breadth of what Chilean documentary film both has been and is. This is an especially important gesture for international readers... Pushes the conversation on documentary far beyond the stale, though classic debates about objectivity and subjectivity; it shows that documentary film is not only a medium capable of capturing memories but also of actively creating and triggering them through sensory experience.’ — Michael Lazzara, A Contracorriente 18.2, 2021, 271-78
  • ‘Más allá de esto, no cabe duda que (Un)veiling Bodies. A Trajectory of Chilean Post-dictatorship documentary, se trata de un libro importante para futuros estudios sobre cine documental chileno, estableciendo un verdadero “piso” investigativo, que habrá que considerar al momento de acercarse a él.’ — Iván Pinto Veas, Imagofagia 24, 2021, 689-96
  • ‘En la intersección de diversos ámbitos teóricos, la obra de Ramírez-Soto forma parte, al fin, de una tendencia fecunda que busca establecer puentes entre la historia, la ética y los estudios de la imagen. Desmarcándose prudentemente de los trauma studies y prefiriendo situar su reflexión bajo el signo del “giro afectivo”, (Un)veiling Bodies logra dar cuenta exitosamente de un periodo sensible de la producción documental en Chile, otorgando una nueva visibilidad a un corpus a menudo ignorado por los investigadores.’ — Ignacio Albornoz Fariña, Cinémas d'Amérique Latine 28, 2020, 170-71 (full text online)

Accent, Rhythm and Meaning in French Verse
Roger Pensom
Research Monographs in French Studies 44•30 September 2018

  • ‘With his passing, we have lost an indispensable and challenging voice in the ongoing dispute about the nature of French metricity, a voice that has restored to the debate, with impressive scholarship, the claims of the pre-modern and early modern periods, a voice that has tirelessly made the very necessary case for accent, and tellingly revealed the shortcomings of too purist a version of isosyllabism.’ — Clive Scott, Modern Language Review 114.4, October 2019, 875-76 (full text online)
  • ‘This highly detailed, technically demanding book is not one that undergraduates will be expected to read, but its findings should unquestionably be one’s starting point in introducing them to French verse.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.4, October 2019, 497 (full text online)
  • ‘The legacy of this book, and of its author’s life’s work, does not have to be, indeed, does not deserve to be, relegated to the lone furrow which he sometimes suggests he is ploughing. There is ample proof here to suggest that the accentual has a vital role to play within the metrical, that the peculiar tensions and hesitations of verse rhythm are produced, precisely, by the interplay between the two... Pensom’s work makes a welcome and valuable contribution.’ — David Evans, H-France 19.239, November 2019

Affective Spaces: Migration in Scandinavian and German Transnational Narratives
Anja Tröger
Germanic Literatures 24•26 July 2021

  • ‘Anja Tröger’s 2021 monograph Affective Spaces: Migration in Scandinavian and German Transnational Narratives examines twelve novels whose fairly recent publication dates are bookended by Vigdis Hjorth’s Snakk til meg (2011) and Zeshan Shakar’s Tante Ulrikkes vei (2017)... twelve very compelling transnational narratives that are well worth the engagement.’ — Thomas Herold, German Studies Review 46.2, May 2023, 328-30

Balzac's Love Letters: Correspondence and the Literary Imagination
Ewa Szypula
Research Monographs in French Studies 52•19 December 2016

  • ‘Balzac the inveterate re-reader forces his own readers into their own, creative, re-readings of his texts. How fortunate, then, that so many of Balzac’s own letters, not least those to Mme Hanska, have been preserved for our own reading and re-reading, and are thus able to give rise to this subtle, sophisticated, original — and eminently readable — new study.’ — Owen Heathcote, H-France 17, November 2017
  • ‘On en saluera en n l’originalité, la nesse d’analyse, et l’attention subtile prêtée à l’écriture de Balzac, à ses tactiques comme à son tact, à sa volonté de maîtrise comme à sa délicatesse.’ — Thomas Conrad, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 335-36
  • ‘Szypula treats the letters as texts in their own right, arguing persuasively that they can be analysed in much the same way as we might read and interpret Balzac’s fiction... As Szypula argues compellingly, the themes of writing and rereading assume special importance in the 1844 novel Modeste Mignon, in which Balzac can be seen to reflect on the limitations of rereading, particularly when a letter-writer is insincere. The study concludes with an Afterword that examines Mme Han ska’s attempts at revising Balzac’s letters following his death, a process that shows — as Szypula does so refreshingly in this volume — that this correspondence has never truly closed, but instead remains intriguingly open to rereading and re-interpretation.’ — Andrew Watts, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 610-11

Blanchot and the Moving Image: Fascination and Spectatorship
Calum Watt
Moving Image 8•29 September 2017

  • ‘Watt’s study is exemplary in the impressive range of texts and references that it draws on, and in the intensive seriousness of its discussions. It will be an inevitable reference for anyone venturing into this uncanny territory.’ — Jeff Fort, H-France 18.143, 2018
  • ‘One of the striking things to emerge from Calum Watt’s impressive study is the extent to which contemporary discussion of the art of film draws on Maurice Blanchot’s thought... [This book] does justice independently to each of its subjects.’ — Michael Holland, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 632-33 (full text online)
  • ‘Exhaustive scholarship abetted by meticulous referencing, and a keen eye for the specificities of a certain mode of exposure (one which is remarked upon in the author’s Introduction) to the cinematographic as work (and unworking), are all commendable traits of the latest addition to a significant series.’ — Garin Dowd, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 572-573 (full text online)
  • ‘Blanchot and the Moving Image seems like an opening salvo in a larger intellectual project, one that will track the ways in which—as one of the study's most exciting claims has it—"cinema's contribution to thought is fascination".’ — Mikko Tuhkanen, Postmodern Culture 29.2, January 2019
  • ‘Watt makes a convincing case for Blanchot's appositeness to the moving image and, in the process, discovers that Blanchot's phantasmatic presence is already insinuated within film theory's margins... Overall, Blanchot and the Moving Image is an impressive piece of research that betrays a wealth of cognizance, not only of Blanchot's own writings, but also of his subtle yet persistent influence within twentieth and twenty first century continental philosophy and, subsequently, Anglophone film theory.’ — Corey P. Cribb, Film-Philosophy 24.1, February 2020, 71-74 (full text online)

Bodies of Disorder: Gender and Degeneration in Baroja and Blasco Ibáñez
Katharine Murphy
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 26•1 November 2017

  • ‘Murphy highlights the substantial points of comparison between the two authors, despite the hostility between them and their very different journeys through the literary canon. Taken in its entirety, this book deftly sets about dismantling quite a number of critical distinctions and commonplaces... This will be a valuable book for anyone working on the Spanish novel, discourses of degeneration across Europe, cultural studies, and on the dynamics of female literacy and agency.’ — Geraldine Lawless, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 96.9, 2019, 1553-55

Broken Glass, Broken World: Glass in French Culture in the Aftermath of 1870
Hannah Scott
Research Monographs in French Studies 46•19 December 2016

  • ‘Perhaps due to glass’s ubiquity in the urban landscape, Parisians did not fully realize its fragile underpinning of Paris until Prussian bombing quite literally shattered glass’s transparency as urban phenomenon. It was through glass’s destruction that it became a privileged object manifesting the devastation of the année terrible for Parisians. Scott’s ingenuity lies in making glass visible, but especially in proposing broken glass as another ruin of Paris that both fascinated and disturbed contemporaries.’ — Colin Foss, H-France 18, March 2018, no. 53
  • ‘Scott’s incredible historical precision within a compact monograph has tremendous benefits to the field and raises even larger questions about the relationship between the Third Republic’s emphasis on glass and the social roles played by glass today, especially in the ecological arena. One wonders how the windowpanes, glass aquariums, and wine glasses of the post-industrial era gave way to the plastic wrapping and electronic screens that now serve as barriers between ourselves, the rest of humanity, and the planet as a whole.’ — Claire Nettleton, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 46.3-4, 2018
  • ‘This book is an outstanding contribution to an increasingly important field of study: the activating relationship between material culture and literary texts. Substantial and innovative chapters are devoted to Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans, prefaced by a richly informative account of the proliferation of glass objects and structures, from the monumental to the miniscule, in nineteenth-century France.’ — Robert Lethbridge, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 456-57
  • ‘This engaging and perceptive monograph is a significant contribution to the growing body of scholarship that resituates nineteenth-century literature within its material environment... A remarkably original work, one which is grounded in material research but which manages, nonetheless, to be rightly a work of primarily literary criticism.’ — Natasha Ryan, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 661-62 (full text online)

Childhood, Memory, and the Nation: Young Lives under Nazism in Contemporary German Culture
Alexandra Lloyd
Germanic Literatures 23•28 September 2020

Comedy and Trauma in Germany and Austria after 1945: The Inner Side of Mourning
Stephanie Bird
Germanic Literatures 10•19 December 2016

  • ‘This study offers an original and distinctive approach which illuminates key aspects of the chosen works while also enhancing the highly complex nature of mourning.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.4, October 2018, 506 (full text online)
  • ‘A fresh perspective on comedy and the complex roles comedic devices have played in postwar German-language literature and lm and in discussions of trauma.’ — Corey L. Twitchell, German Studies Review 42.1, February 2019, 176-178 (full text online)

Comparative Literature in Britain: National Identities, Transnational Dynamics 1800-2000
Joep Leerssen
Studies In Comparative Literature 27•23 September 2019

  • ‘This is a study of the rare kind of which it can truthfully be said that it is definitive: the description fits Leerssen’s book perfectly. To those still living who launched comparative literature in the new universities some 50 years ago it will come as a happy reminder of an exciting time of innovation and change which they were fortunate to have been part of. To those of a later generation it will reveal that what happened in the 1960s did not emerge from nowhere: a long and honourable history, ably explored by Professor Leerssen, led up to it.’ — John Fletcher, Journal of European Studies 50.3, 2020, 302-321 (full text online)
  • ‘The publication of [this book] is welcome news... The entire section on the nineteenth century is a treasure house of insights into cross-national and comparative ways of approaching knowledge... This is, all in all, a book to be heartily recommended for a wide variety of readers interested in comparative studies in the humanities and social sciences, while being of particular interest to those wishing to understand the evolution of literary and cultural studies.’ — Barnita Bagchi, History of Humanities Fall 2020, 554-56

Contemporary French Poetry: Towards a Minor Poetics
Daisy Sainsbury
Research Monographs in French Studies 65•26 July 2021

  • ‘Sainsbury has opened up a hospitable space for further reflection and critical engagement. This is a sure-handed, accessible and very knowledgeable study of what is challenging, and critically important, work.’ — Michael G. Kelly, Modern Language Review 119.2, 2024, 273-74 (full text online)

Contemporary Galician Women Writers
Catherine Barbour
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 39•28 September 2020

  • ‘Contemporary Galician Women Writers is an engaging and informative study of Galician literature and identity and, especially, a valuable contribution to the scholarship on Galician narrative fiction by women.’ — Silvia Oliveira, Hispania 105.2, June 2022, 303-04 (full text online)
  • ‘A valuable contribution that presents a thorough picture of the Galician cultural landscape; at the same time, it stresses the need for academia to enquire beyond the national understanding of literary systems.’ — Lucia Cernadas, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 94.2, 2022, 379-80 (full text online)
  • ‘Presents a compelling, well-written textual analysis of six novels that adds substantially to our knowledge about three commercially successful writers who, except for Moure (the Galician-language writer), are yet to receive sustained attention. The book convincingly shows that much is learnt about the literary representation of Galician identities when the works under study are by authors who are located outside Galician national literature. The book will be of interest to scholars working on Hispanic Peninsular, particularly Galician, Literary Studies, but it also has much to offer to other literary scholars, especially those working on women’s writing.’ — María Liñeira, Galicia 21 2023, 124-27

Cortázar and Music
Nicholas Roberts
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 25•30 December 2019

  • ‘Alongside literature and politics, music is an inescapable presence in the work of Julio Cortázar. In this thorough and wide-ranging study, Nicholas Roberts provides a detailed analysis of the myriad ways in which music appears in the novels, short stories, and critical work of the Argentine. In the process, he reveals that music was no mere leitmotiv, but rather provided the structural tools for key works.’ — Ben Bollig, Modern Language Review 116.4, October 2021, 671-72 (full text online)
  • ‘Es un libro que invita a sus lectores a reencontrarse con las obras de Cortázar, pero al mismo tiempo nos inspira a perseguir una serie de preguntas más generales sobre la presencia de la música en la literatura moderna.’ — Matt Johnson, Revista Iberoamericana 87.276, July-September 2021, 952-54

Depicting the Divine: Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann
Olga G. Voronina
Studies In Comparative Literature 47•23 April 2019

  • ‘Olga G. Voronina’s careful comparative study brings to light many of the parallel narrative strategies in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers... What sets Bulgakov and Mann apart from the mainstream, as Voronina convincingly shows, is their decision to engage polemically with biblical texts.’ — Thomas Seifrid, Comparative Literature Studies 57.3, 2020, 559-62
  • ‘В заключение хочу сказать, что книга Ольги Ворониной инновативна в постановке исследовательской проблемы и плодотворна в ее решении. Завершаю рецензию на книгу цитатой из другого булгаковского романа: «Она дышит! Она живет!».’ — Irina Belobrovtseva, Scando-Slavica 67.2, 2021, 287-94 (full text online)
  • ‘Voronina has created a convincing, far-researching, unique and engaging study of Bulgakov's and Mann's poetic versions of biblical narratives, which both de- and re-mythologize the source text and are characterized by syncretism and rich intertextuality. The book is undoubtedly interesting and inspiring not only for Slavic and German scholars but also for any reader who is interested in a different and innovative approach to the study of comparative literature. The spiritual, scientific, and scholarly merits of this book perfectly complement one another.’ — Natalia Kaloh Vid, Slavic Review full text online)
  • ‘The first comparative study of The Master and Margarita and Joseph and His Brothers, and an important and original contribution to research on Bulgakov’s and Mann’s novels as well as on biblical literature in more general terms.’ — Sarah Fengler, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation 30 September 2021
  • ‘Depicting the Divine is a meticulously researched, impressive close reading of two novels... a valuable contribution to literary studies. In her nuanced close readings and thorough research of the two novels Voronina applies a specialist’s insight to both Bulgakov and Mann, paying attention to linguistic subtleties in the two languages and explaining them well to the English reader.’ — Eric Laursen, Russian Review 80.4, October 2021, 713-14 (full text online)

E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Orient: Romantic Aesthetics and the German Imagination
Joanna Neilly
Germanic Literatures 11•19 December 2016

  • ‘A thorough and innovative monograph... E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Orient is a well-written study that serves an indispensable function as a comprehensive and careful survey of the theme of orientalism in Hoffmann’s works. Neilly is ready to criticize Hoffmann’s orientalism when necessary, but what is more important, she is also receptive to those aspects of Hoffmann that cannot be reduced to orientalist discourse or are even critical of orientalism.’ — Asko Nivala, European Romantic Review August 2018 (full text online)
  • ‘The book is written in a clear, crisp style... It is rich, dense, and full of insight and overall an important and original addition not only to the body of Hoffmann scholarship; it also adds an important facet to our understanding of the Romantic preoccupation with the Orient.’ — Juergen Barkhoff, Modern Language Review 114.4, October 2019, 886-87 (full text online)
  • ‘Hoffmann has until now been presented as something of a peripheral Orientalist, with more attention typically being paid to Schlegel and Novalis. Neilly’s searching study serves as a thoughtful corrective, revealing across a series of close readings the range and variety of Eastern motifs that are implied and appropriated in Hoffmann’s fictions, or—as is most often, and most intriguingly, the case—critically reflected upon, in a way that turns his ironic mirror back onto German aesthetics and indeed onto the notion of the fixed self.’ — Polly Dickson, German Studies Review 43.3, October 2020, 607-10 (full text online)

Encounters with Albion: Britain and the British in Texts by Jewish Refugees from Nazism
Anthony Grenville
Germanic Literatures 17•22 August 2018

  • ‘Some of the most moving stories, though, are written by less well-known figures: tales of loneliness; the humiliating treatment of domestic servants; stories of loss by children who arrived with the Kindertransport... Grenville has trawled the archives of the AJR and numerous books and diaries for stories which help us understand the experience of refugees. It is hard to think of anyone who has done more to open up their world and bring it to life.’ — David Herman, Jewish Chronicle 26 October 2018
  • ‘By examining the writings of Jews who had escaped to the UK, Grenville has pieced together an invaluable account of the feelings of shock, anger and confusion which those who were interned experienced.’ — Robert Philpot, The Times of Israel 2 December 2018
  • ‘Unusually for an academic publication, Grenville’s book will move its readers in several ways: the plight of the refugees in a strange country; their differing degrees of success; the crude and unfeeling ways in which the British authorities dealt with so many internees; the incomprehension towards refugees that was displayed by a large number of British citizens; and, conversely, the kindness, generosity and warm-heartedness that was shown by so many ordinary people to total strangers whose language they did not speak and for whose culture they often had little comprehension.’ — Richard Sheppard, Journal of European Studies 51.2, June 2021, 157-59 (full text online)
  • ‘Grenvilles Methode der Darstellung beruht auf einem close reading und de- taillierter Textinterpretation, wobei Grenville hier literarische und historische, oft kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse kombiniert. Durch die Zitate und Kommentare können LeserInnen sich einen guten Einblick in die Textgrundlage verschaffen, was besonders wichtig ist, denn die herangezogenen Texte wurden meistens auf Englisch geschrieben, sind aber nicht immer leicht zugänglich.’ — Eva-Maria Thüne, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik 53.1, 2021, 226-29

Film Festivals: Cinema and Cultural Exchange
Mar Diestro-Dópido
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 18•1 May 2021

  • ‘A detailed account of the myriad aspects of film festivals and their cultural import both within and beyond the field of film studies. The book will be of interest to scholars and students of film, film festivals, film cultures, with specific relevance to those working in the fields of Basque, Spanish, Argentine, and British film and these related contexts.’ — Fiona Noble, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 7.1, 141-42 (full text online)
  • ‘The key strength of Diestro-Dópido’s book lies in her ability to critically address the intricacies that shape film festivals by focusing on ‘the point of view of the communities that constitute the festival cosmos: organizers, funders, filmmakers, producers, critics, directors, programmers, guests, educational bodies, and more’. This book will be, therefore, an essential text for students and scholars of film festivals, as well as for those involved in running film festivals. It makes a unique contribution to the fields of Spanish screen studies and film festival studies alike due Diestro-Dópido’s original methodological and theoretical approach, close access to the main practitioners in the field and its focus on overlooked film festivals.’ — Jara Fernández Meneses, Studies in Spanish and Latin American Cinemas 19, June 2022, 264-66 (full text online)

The First English Translations of Molière: Drama in Flux 1663-1732
Suzanne Jones
Transcript 13•28 September 2020

Foreign Parts: German and Austrian Actors on the British Stage 1933-1960
Richard Dove
Germanic Literatures 15•29 September 2017

  • ‘Readers with high expectations will not be disappointed by Foreign Parts. It is a fascinating presentation of the careers of five actors who, forced to leave Germany and Austria by Hitler, set about plying their trade on the stage in Britain... Dove’s account of the actors’ careers in pre-war and wartime Britain is exemplary.’ — Anthony Grenville, AJR Journal 2018
  • ‘The stories that unfold are engaging when viewed as biographies, because of the different challenges and problems each of the actors had to confront. Their different treatment when Britain decided to intern ‘enemy aliens’ reflects the chaotic and sometimes extreme nature of wartime bureaucracy, and their choices after the war are fascinating, with only Mannheim choosing to return to Germany.’ — David Barnett, Modern Language Review 114.2, April 2019, 411-12 (full text online)

Form and Reform in Eighteenth-Century Spain: Utopian Narratives and Socio-Political Debate
Carla Almanza-Gálvez
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 33•25 February 2019

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)

Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination
Elisa Segnini
Studies In Comparative Literature 56•26 July 2021

  • ‘The wide-ranging approach of the book, which also engages with recent debates in decadence and early modernist studies, openly challenges the “abrupt separation between authors associated with the ‘half-mock interlude of decadence’ and those considered exponents of symbolism, and thus part of early modernism”... The author keeps steady command of her arguments while navigating and scrutinising several artifacts from different cultures, though of course each case study shows its own fine tuning.’ — Giulio Milone, Synergies 2, 2021, 65-68 (full text online)
  • ‘Elisa Segnini leads her readers on a journey through fin-de-siècle Europe with one extra stop in Japan. The universe unveiled by Segnini is populated by uncanny mask makers, men in drag, grotesque masquerades, deathly plaster casts, gruesome masks of exceptional men, criminals, and deviants... A distinctive contribution to a field that can only benefit from engaging with the anthropological, medical, and legal discourse that underlies the artistic production of the fin de siècle.’ — Alessandra Crotti, Rivista di studi vittoriani 53, 2022, 121-25

France, Algeria and the Moving Image: Screening Histories of Violence 1963–2010
Maria Flood
Research Monographs in French Studies 49•26 February 2018

  • ‘Combining scholarly precision with formal concision, Flood’s volume ranges widely and innovatively across the highlighted representations of Franco-Algerian violence from the colonial period to the present, providing valuable insights into the broader landscape of relations between the two countries, and specifically the violence, both punctual and systemic, that has historically underpinned them. In the process, it justifies her foundational argument, namely the capacity of the imagined spaces of cinema not only to reflect critically on the colonial past and the postcolonial present, but also actively to imagine alternative futures, in France, Algeria, and beyond.’ — Philip Dine, French Studies 73.3, July 2019, 494-95 (full text online)

Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change
Cláudia Pazos Alonso
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 35•21 January 2020

  • ‘It is a rare pleasure to encounter such a meticulous, far-reaching, and at the same time, downright readable academic book as this (which, to its further merit, has an excellent, full Index). The author leaves no stone unturned in her painstaking exploration and rigorous analysis of Wood’s career and periodical culture in nineteenth-century Portugal. The book traverses intellectual biography, literary, social and cultural history, the history of ideas and, of course, the insightful textual analysis for which Pazos Alonso is so highly regarded. This excellent and ground-breaking monograph extends our understanding of the intellectual culture of 1860s Portugal, reaching well beyond the immediate subject matter at hand. It is an essential reference for scholars of nineteenth-century writers of any sex.’ — Rhian Atkin, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 2021 (full text online)
  • ‘Pazos Alonso vai mesmo mais longe celebrando Wood como um exemplo da primeira vaga de feminismo na Europa... A autora reconstrói uma rede de figuras, europeias e outras, defensoras dos direitos femininos, na qual insere Wood demontrando que, se era uma voz praticamente isolada em Portugal, não o era se colocada num contexto mais amplo situado para além das estreitas fronteiras culturais e políticas lusas.’ — Teresa Pinto Coelho, Revista de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses 29, 2020, 233-41
  • ‘Neste livro, Cláudia faz brilhantemente justiça a Francisca, prestando ao mesmo tempo um serviço à cultura nacional.’ — Ana Luisa Vilela, Colóquio-Letras 206, 2021, 276-279
  • ‘Pazos Alonso’s compelling and engaging study not only rescues a prime Portuguese journalist and intellectual from cultural oblivion, but also grants her a well-deserved transnational place in feminist and gender scholarship.’ — Leticia Villamediana González, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 508-09 (full text online)
  • ‘Succeeds admirably in its proposed aim to offer an overview of the Portuguese mid-nineteenth-century periodical press through the closer analysis of Francisca Wood’s career as editor of A Voz Feminina. It is a groundbreaking study, especially valuable for its extensive archival research that brings to light the figure of a forgotten Portuguese woman writer and pioneer feministas well as the results of her progressive efforts in both the Portuguese and international contexts.’ — Manuela Mourão, American Journal of Lusophone Studies 6.2, 2022, 209-11 (full text online)

Franz Grillparzer’s Dramatic Heroines: Theatre and Women’s Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Austria
Matthew McCarthy-Rechowicz
Germanic Literatures 1•25 May 2018

The French Art Novel 1900-1930
Katherine Shingler
Research Monographs in French Studies 43•19 December 2016

  • ‘An extremely informative and enjoyable study, which takes the reader on a rich and detailed tour of the early twentieth-century French artist’s world, “far beyond the form and concerns of the genre’s nineteenth-century foundational texts”. Clear, compelling, lucid, well researched, and beautifully written, Shingler’s book is an important and welcome sequel to scholarship written on the romantic art novel.’ — Dominique Jullien, H-France 18, May 2018, No. 111
  • ‘Shingler uncovers an approach to twentieth-century novels that bears pursuing further. Shingler investigates gender issues thoroughly and with great clarity, but she also locates other anxieties in the work of these writers.’ — Alexander Dickow, French Studies 72.2, April 2018, 305–306 (full text online)
  • ‘Il genere letterario dell’art novel viene de nito da Katherine Shingler come un genere in cui la nzione è strettamente connessa all’arte, nel senso che il focus della narrazione è rivolto a problematiche legate alle arti visive e i personaggi, perlopiù nel ruolo di protagonisti, sono degli artisti.’ — Michela Gardini, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 356-57
  • ‘A well-documented volume offering in-depth analyses of a well-chosen corpus, which comprises the expected classics as well as less familiar novels. The book will be useful and illuminating for readers of art novels and for literature and art students and scholars alike.’ — Emilie Sitzia, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 879-80 (full text online)

Fulvio Tomizza: Writing the Trauma of Exile
Marianna Deganutti
Italian Perspectives 38•30 September 2018

  • ‘Deganutti’s monograph is a fine and original book whose ultimate merit is to reclaim multilingual, multicultural Tomizza and the exilic predicament of the Istrian borderlands for Italian literature. It is to be hoped that her study will inspire further cross-cultural research on this still contentious and yet incredibly generative literary, historical, and memorial field.’ — Katia Pizzi, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 736-37 (full text online)

Gómez Manrique, Statesman and Poet: The Practice of Poetry in Fifteenth-Century Spain
Gisèle Earle
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 31•26 February 2018

  • ‘In this comprehensive study of how Manrique practised poetry, which also includes his prose, Earle offers both detailed textual analysis of individual works and an interpretation of Manrique’s literary corpus. Through this dual focus, Earle emphasizes the evolution of Manrique’s rhetorical style through figurative language and the political thrust of Manrique’s writing, including works that have traditionally been studied separately, such as elegy and devotional texts. As a result, this study makes a valuable contribution to existing scholarship through its new perspective on Manrique’s textual production, which also opens doors for future investigation.’ — Holly Sims, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 96.8, 2019, 1343-65 (full text online)

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)

I Suffer, Therefore I Am: Engaging with Empathy in Contemporary French Women’s Writing
Kathryn Robson
Research Monographs in French Studies 56•23 April 2019

  • ‘In this concise, fascinating book, Kathryn Robson explores text/reader relationships in a range of contemporary French women’s writing, including memoirs, fictional, and autofictional texts that relate to narratives of suffering--in particular, anorexia (chapter one), the death of a child (chapter two), and maternal filicide (chapter three), with chapter four focusing on autofictional narratives... Robson shows that it is all too easy to assume empathy, and that empathy can itselfdo damage to the other. Her study is important because it deals with why readers may feel uncomfortable towards narratives of suffering and, in interrogating empathy, offers some pointers towards newly negotiated ethical empathetic responses. We should read these narratives and try to approach others’ suffering, but we need to interrogate our responses to them and take responsibility for our readings. This is a wonderful, sensitive book, beautifully and thoughtfully written, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to t’ — Gill Rye, H-France 20.34, January 2020
  • ‘A stimulating, innovative, and insightful discussion of empathy and the reading process in relation to narratives of suffering. Furthermore, as well as considering the limits of empathy, Robson also challenges the limits of the reader by compelling him/her to engage with and reflect on difficult narrative themes such as parental grief and filicide. This study will appeal to a wide range of readers and researchers from diverse areas such as French Studies, Women’s Writing, Affect Studies, Trauma Writing, and Feminist Theory.’ — Julie Rodgers, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 734-35 (full text online)
  • ‘In this outstanding analysis on the representations of pain and suffering in contemporary French women's writing, Robson challenges the notion of empathy as a way of putting oneself in someone else's shoes, destabilizing at the same time the reader's fixed positions. In doing so, she invites us to rethink empathy as a possibility for creating alternative approaches and challenges our ways of approaching others' pain.’ — Didem Alkan, Women in French Studies 28, 2020, 149-150 (full text online)
  • ‘This fascinating book provides a thoughtful and incisive reflection on empathetic engagement in narratives of suffering in contemporary women’s writing in French. Kathryn Robson’s brilliant analysis assembles an impressive range of contemporary authors around a selection of themes that have been startlingly prominent in recent years — anorexia, child loss, and infanticide —, offering patient, nuanced, and original readings.’ — Amaleena Damlé, French Studies 74.3, July 2020, 489–490 (full text online)

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

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

Intimacy and Distance: Conflicting Cultures in Nineteenth-Century France
Philippa Lewis
Legenda (General Series) •29 September 2017

  • ‘L’ouvrage ne se contente pas d’explorer les productions littéraires de l’intime (du roman intime au récit de voyage) mais s’appuie sur une belle et riche variété de formes littéraires et culturelles (journaux intimes, portraits littéraires, critique d’art) pour mettre en évidence la hiérarchie des valeurs à l’œuvre dans la notion d’intime.’ — Françoise Grauby, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 459
  • ‘Philippa Lewis’s fresh, thoughtful overview of the virtual relationships between French authors and readers between 1830 and 1870 focuses on selected works by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Fromentin, Maurice de Guérin, and C.-A. Sainte-Beuve... She effectively synthesizes the deconstructive distinguo move of deconstruction—dissecting specious identities—with a discreet historical consciousness that alternatively discloses new ranges of possibilities and then contracts into a synthesis. Brief, thoughtful footnotes extend Lewis’s discussions in many directions, revealing her exemplary deep background.’ — Laurence M. Porter, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 47.1-2, Fall 2018
  • ‘In this thoughtful and suggestive monograph, Philippa Lewis offers a carefully historicized, thoroughly researched, and beautifully written account of the place occupied by the concept of intimacy in the literary culture of nineteenth-century France, and especially its middle decades... The book’s true point, and its greatest merit, is to get under the skin—intus, et in cute—of nineteenth-century French letters; to reanimate with a careful balance of sympathy and erudition a somewhat forgotten yet profoundly influential moment in the history of literary thought. In this respect, the book will be of compelling interest to all scholars of nineteenth-century France.’ — Andrew J. Counter, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 146-47 (full text online)
  • ‘Accompagnato da una bibliogra a veramente ricca e da un dettagliato indice dei nomi, il saggio di Philippa Lewis si occupa nella prima parte dell’Intimacy, prendendo come punto di partenza un saggio di Henry James su Sainte-Beuve, in cui l’autore mostra il carattere “intimo” della scrittura come una caratteristica di una importante zona della letteratura francese del xix secolo: «poésie intime, the roman intime, and the journal intime».’ — Maria Emanuela Raffi, Studi francesi 186, 20, 2019, 516-17
  • ‘Lewis’s convincing argument revolves around the idea that male authors writing after 1830, including both well- and lesser-known writers such as Flaubert, Euge`ne Fromentin, and above all Baudelaire, employed certain textual strategies as a result of their ambivalent feelings towards intimacy... This study constitutes a very significant addition to the existing corpus of works on the cultural and literary history of intimacy.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.1, January 2019, 119
  • ‘A very well-researched and engaging contribution to the literary history of nineteenth-century France, the social and cultural history of emotions, Baudelaire studies, and historical masculinity studies. By deprivileging distance as the primary spatial and affective metaphor for understanding post-revolutionary French society and restoring intimacy to its rightful place on the cultural and literary landscape, Lewis successfully complicates one of the foundational paradigms of nineteenth-century French studies, making her book a compelling read for all scholars in the field.’ — Jessica Tanner, H-France 19, February 2019, no. 27
  • ‘This book is written with admirable clarity and, via the lens of intimacy, offers original perspectives on some well-known and lesser-known writers, while also shedding light on the emotional history of the nineteenth century.’ — Paul Gibbard, Emotions: History, Culture, Society 3, 2019, 174-75

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)

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)

Jean-François Vilar: Theatres Of Crime
Margaret Atack
Research Monographs in French Studies 51•28 September 2020

  • ‘Deeply knowledgeable, lucid and clearly written, ably teasing out narrative complexities, philosophical challenges and socio-political controversies, Atack’s study illuminates and explains the importance of Vilar’s writing not just for aficionados of noir fiction, but for anyone seeking insights into the history and culture of modern France.’ — David H. Walker, Journal of European Studies 51.3–4, November 2021, 368-69
  • ‘A thoroughly researched and critically insightful assessment of Vilar’s noir fiction. Critics and theorists of crime literature will find much to mine in Atack’s interpretations, geared more for scholars than the generally curious... a superb, largely celebratory monograph on Vilar’s writings, reanimating him from the shadows and introducing him to an English reading audience.’ — Robin Walz, H-France 22.17, January 2022
  • ‘In Jean-François Vilar: Theatres of Crime, Margaret Atack undertakes an exploration of Vilar’s crime novels, short stories, and non-fictional writings on cities with a view towards ‘elucidat[ing] the coherence of the political, thematic, generic, and textual dimensions’ of his writing and contributing towards larger debates about ‘fiction, politics and history; philosophy, narrative and art; text and image’... The monograph is beautifully written and, on the whole, achieves its aims. As Atack notes in the introduction, this is the first full-length study of Vilar’s work—an excellent contribution to literary scholarship, in its own right.’ — Julie M. Powell, Modern and Contemporary France published online, 2022 (full text online)

José Saramago: History, Utopia, and the Necessity of Error
Mark Sabine
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 23•19 December 2016

  • ‘Beyond providing a rigorous, detailed and elegant analysis of those novels, Sabine offers a model for reading Saramago that will serve as reference point for any future work.’ — Paulo de Medeiros, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 95, 2018, 579-80
  • ‘This volume is of tremendous use to both seasoned scholars of Saramago and those who, like many in the English-speaking world, are familiar only with his later novels.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 377
  • ‘Likely to be welcomed by specialists and non-specialists looking for a critical grounding in the author’s initial and decisive novels of the 1980s.’ — Ana Paula Ferreira, Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.2, 2019, 299-301 (full text online)
  • ‘From a broad perspective which accepts the idea of an inherent political project and its utopian message, this book excellently resumes the possible justifications, together with scholarly well founded contextualizations, thus offering an outstandingly solid basis from which to depart towards further fruitful debates.’ — Burghard Baltrusch, Portuguese Studies 36.1, July 2020, 115-19 (full text online)

The Journalist in the French Fin-de-siècle Novel: Enfants de la presse
Kate Rees
Legenda (General Series) •26 February 2018

  • ‘L’ouvrage de Rees est donc intéressant et riche, on ne peut qu’en recommander la lecture. Il constitue une excellente synthèse de la recherche en direction du public anglophone, tout en apportant son propre regard sur les représentations du journalisme.’ — Guillaume Pinson, French Studies 73.2, April 2019, 312 (full text online)
  • ‘An excellent new analysis of the figure of the journalist in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French fiction. It will be a significant guide for future studies of the French press and the French journalist, and it serves as a reminder of the historical importance of journalists and the press, especially in today’s world of “fake news” campaigns and anti- media attacks that aim to silence the essential role of journalists in our society.’ — Juliette M. Rogers, H-France 19.70, May 2019
  • ‘Kate Rees’s fine new monograph takes us into a world both strange and familiar: magazine and newspaper publishing in the Belle Époque... Rees produces rich and detailed readings of all the texts she considers, unfolding their complexities with great subtlety while drawing in ideas from fields as diverse as phenomenology and remediation theory. A substantial and significant research content has been orchestrated with a sure touch, resulting in a monograph which will be of interest not only to dix-neuviémistes but to anyone concerned with the relationship between literature and journalism, and the latter’s role in shaping modern culture.’ — Emma Bielecki, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 729-30 (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)

The Language of Disease: Writing Syphilis in Nineteenth-Century France
Steven Wilson
Research Monographs in French Studies 62•28 September 2020

  • ‘One of the book’s strongest points is its effort to highlight critical traditions that are rarely brought into the conversation. Wilson regularly offers helpful summaries and clarifications on the different critical currents discussed.’ — Alexandre Wenger, Metascience 23 October 2021 (full text online)
  • ‘Wilson’s study contributes significantly to an emerging area of research acknowledging the centrality of syphilis to broader social, medical, and hygienic anxieties, while employing methodologies from the critical medical humanities to focus specifically on the diseased body and its relationship to the language of disease... As we are constantly reminded of the importance of quarantine, contagion, and transmission, Wilson’s approach to the body and language raises questions for future study on how the diseased or sick body shapes and generates language, and how this language shapes our understanding of the body.’ — Beatrice Fagan, Modern Language Review 117.1, January 2022, 127-28 (full text online)
  • ‘Steven Wilson’s The Language of Disease makes a significant contribution to ongoing efforts to de-anglicize the medical humanities... While Wilson’s book is, by his own admission, but 'one study of [the language of] one disease in one country at one particular time,' there is no doubt that the approach it adopts will be of considerable value to future explorations of the linguistic dimension of disease.’ — Jordan Owen McCullough, Literature and Medicine 39.1, Spring 2021, 180-84 (full text online)
  • ‘Wilson constructs a compelling argument in favour of the medical humanities considering both the critical value of expanding its preoccupation with contemporary medicine, and the importance of taking a more global approach... Wilson’s book is brimming with information, fresh critical perspectives, and compelling close readings that ensure that it will become an important reference for scholars of nineteenth-century French studies in search of this most elusive of diseases.’ — Sarah Jones, Irish Journal of French Studies 21, 2021, 150-51
  • ‘Steven Wilson’s book is guided by a question which is at once both extraordinarily timely and yet timeless: how does the diseased body shape language and what, in turn, are the effects of language in shaping our understanding of the diseased body? ... This important book thereby provides a fresh perspective on nineteenth-century writing on syphilis, allowing the reader to realize the urgency of a truly critical, comparative, and transnational medical humanities.’ — Anna Magdalena Elsner, French Studies 76.2, April 2022, 298-99 (full text online)

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

The Living Death of Modernity: Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola
Dorothy Kelly
Research Monographs in French Studies 63•22 July 2021

Louis-René des Forêts and Inner Autobiography
Ian Maclachlan
Research Monographs in French Studies 60•28 September 2020

  • ‘As well as providing an essential and indeed unique landmark in studies of des Forêts, Maclachlan’s volume succeeds in combining close attention to the power of the negative as it affects the task of writing and to the poignancies of a life lived in its orbit.’ — Patrick ffrench, French Studies 76.1, January 2022, 132 (full text online)
  • ‘In emphasizing the convergence between Des Forêts’s enterprise and the late work of Derrida... Maclachlan is able to demonstrate the singular excess of language over its own avowed deficiencies, and provide affirmative evidence, not of the possibility of autobiography, but of its far-reaching, never-ending impossibility.’ — Leslie Hill, Modern and Contemporary France 30.4, 2022, 539-40 (full text online)

Marie NDiaye: Inhospitable Fictions
Shirley Jordan
Research Monographs in French Studies 38•29 September 2017

  • ‘An excellent addition to the growing corpus of NDiaye scholarship... As Jordan also convincingly highlights throughout her study, NDiaye’s work is profoundly ethical, never cynical. Her inhospitable universe challenges us to look for our own ethical compass—not a ready-made hospitality manual. And the merit of Jordan’s study is to help us chart a course. Her readings create, in our encounter with NDiaye’s text, a welcoming critical third space, a hospitable space where writer, critic, and reader read and orient themselves together.’ — Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield, H-France 18.154, 2018
  • ‘Shirley Jordan focuses her exploration in an admirably sharp and focused manner on the problem of hospitality as it arises again and again across NDiaye’s oeuvre... Jordan’s achievement is remarkable... The reader emerges from Jordan’s analysis somewhat humbled by such sustained exposure to a scholarly voice that attempts truly to put into practice its chosen theme of ethical hospitality towards its subject.’ — Andrew Asibong, French Studies 72.4, October 2018, 635 (full text online)
  • ‘Inhospitable Fictions will interest all who have read NDiaye and all those working on her. Whether or not a reader accepts that a concern for hospitality is what ultimately drives NDiaye’s work, it will be difficult to dislodge the way in which Jordan has read her with that particular driver in mind. This monograph adds the philosophical and the anthropological lens to the psychoanalytical lens in its reading of NDiaye, introduces women into the traditionally male-based discourse on hospitality, innovatively draws our attention to the Odyssey as NDiaye’s core intertext on hospitality, and tellingly relates the repressed domestic and familial traumas that surface in her texts to the multiple inhospitalities of colonialism and post-colonial France.’ — Pauline Eaton, Modern and Contemporary France 26.4, Autumn 2018, 431-37 (full text online)
  • ‘Jordan successfully highlights how the theme of inhospitality can work as a master key to unlock NDiaye’s eclectic textual experimentations. Because it surveys such a wide variety of the author’s texts, Jordan’s monograph can serve as an excellent introduction to NDiaye’s work.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.1, January 2019, 118-19
  • ‘In this monograph Shirley Jordan undertakes a consummate examination of the theme of inhospitality which permeates the œuvre of the critically acclaimed French author Marie NDiaye... Jordan’s exceptional work makes a vital contribution to NDiayean scholarship.’ — Alison Marmont, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 185-86 (full text online)

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

Memory Across Borders: Nabokov, Perec, Chamoiseau
Sara-Louise Cooper
Transcript 6•19 December 2016

  • ‘Sara-Louise Cooper’s stimulating monograph convincingly approaches three writers whose lives and careers may at first seem disparate, and brings them together under the banner of border crossings, inter-generational memory, and its transmission.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, April 2018, 265
  • ‘Cooper’s approach encompasses a range of critical discussions, yet her incisive close reading of each author remains central. The book will be useful to students and scholars of any of the three authors, and to those interested in the concept of mobility more widely. Cooper’s future contributions are much anticipated.’ — Fabienne Cheung, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 475-76
  • ‘A meticulous and finely drawn study, highlighting the links in the three works between histories of self and wider histories, and the presence of multiple language and cultural affiliations in a single text... At the end of the work, the author makes a convincing plea not only for the richness to be found in comparative studies, but also for the recognition by French Studies of the constitutive force of movement and of different languages and places within and outside literature written in French.’ — Siobhan Brownlie, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 855-56 (full text online)
  • ‘This monograph, the sixth to appear in Legenda’s exciting new “Transcript” series, is an ambitious and searching work, which fully realises the imprint’s commitment to intercultural and trans-linguistic analysis... This is a beautifully written and elegantly produced monograph, in which stimulating and sensitive close readings are enriched by a deftly handled theoretical apparatus. It is also an important book that opens out onto discussion of much broader themes of urgent contemporary significance: national identity, migration, universalism, francophonie... A significant intervention for those working in memory studies, autobiography, comparative literature and transnational French Studies.’ — Maeve McCusker, H-France 18.201, October 2018

Memory and Utopia: The Poetry of José Ángel Valente
Manus O’Dwyer
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 44•28 September 2020

  • ‘El título del trabajo de Manus O’Dwyer si breve y conciso da cierto vértigo por la amplitud de los temas críticos seleccionados y porque, como el autor reconoce en una elegante y brillante introducción, la crítica en torno al poeta español es prolija. La facilidad con que O’Dwyer soluciona dichas complicaciones en las primeras páginas para focalizar su labor en la cuestión social y política de la poesía de José Ángel Valente es tan encomiable como lapropia edición del libro... Una cuidada publicación de tremenda utilidad tanto para hispanistas como para comparatistas, que por añadido es disfrutable.’ — Juan Blázquez Cuena, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.10, 2021, 1733-34
  • ‘El profesor de la Universidad de Sheffield logra cumpli-damente su propósito: describe los discursos críticos que han relegado e incluso negado esta dimensión y demuestra su relevancia mediante análisis textuales e intertextuales de una multiplicidad de materiales relacionados con la actividad intelectual del poeta (cartas, conferencias, diarios, ensa-yos, poemas, relatos, traducciones, etc.). Este logro es por sí mismo mo-tivo suficiente para recomendar la lectura de Memory and Utopia... Es preciso agradecer a Manus O’Dwyer que su lectura ponga de relieve la fascinante extrañeza que la singular extraterritorialidad cultural rastreable en la obra de José Ángel Valente puede llegar a producir.’ — Daniel Aguirre Oteiza, Prosemas 6, 2021, 232-38
  • ‘Memory and Utopia gravitates around the idea that Valente was not (or not just) a modern mystic who devoted his word to the ineffable, but a poet who found in mystic motifs the way to access his social context, in an attempt to resist the institutionalized, vain discourse of recent extremist political practices... A brave, innovative proposal that is able to look at Valente’s literary production as a whole, and to find in his verse the aim to construct, through “a paradoxical immanence of the transcendent” (115), a utopian space of memory and self-negation in the community.’ — María Vera Reyes, Theory Now 4.2, 2021, 249-53 (full text online)
  • ‘This new vision of the poet is constructed through concise and precise analysis that does not shy away from issues of great philosophical and aesthetic complexity... a ground-breaking and informative book that will change the way readers and scholars appreciate this towering figure of Spanish and Galician verse.’ — Ricardo Fernández Romero, Modern Language Review 118.1, 2023, 147

Metamorphosis in Modern German Literature: Transforming Bodies, Identities and Affects
Tara Beaney
Germanic Literatures 9•19 December 2016

  • ‘In conclusion, this monograph is recommended to an academic readership with a general interest in the role of affect in fictional transformations, and in multidisciplinary, comparative approaches to transformative phenomena.’ — Elisabetta Leopardi, Modern Language Review 113.2, April 2018, 436-39 (full text online)
  • ‘What is innovative is that the author links transformation to affect. Her corpus entails (as is to be expected) E.T.A. Hoffmann and Franz Kafka, discussing e.g. metamorphosis and utopia/dystopia. More original in this context are the case studies on Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Jenny Erpenbeck, and the trans-cultural Japanese German author Yoko Tawada.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 371-72
  • ‘The book’s great merit is that it shows in close readings the prevalence of metamorphosis as a concept in German literature, and how metamorphosis in all its different iterations always questions stable identities and disrupts affective structures.’ — Tanja Nusser, German Studies Review 41.2, May 2018, 396-98 (full text online)

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)

The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism
Michael Charlesworth
Studies In Comparative Literature 36•26 February 2018

  • ‘The clear strengths of this book are in its lucid prose, historical accuracy, and truly fascinating subject matter... Richly supported in terms of diverse textual materials, the book is also visually stunning and contains a number of wonderful illustrations, photographs, and reproduced artworks... Charlesworth’s book presents a compelling case for a renewed interest in Reginald Farrer’s writings, and will remain the definitive work on this topic for many years to come.’ — Jeffrey Mather, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 164-65 (full text online)