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| Page updated 2 February 2012 |
The MHRA Critical Texts series aims to provide affordable critical editions of lesser-known literary texts that are out of copyright and which were not currently in print (or were difficult to obtain).
The texts are taken from the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. Titles will be selected by members of the distinguished Editorial Board and edited by leading academics. There is no requirement for a subvention by authors.
The aim is to produce scholarly editions rather than teaching texts, but the potential for crossover to undergraduate reading lists is recognized.The titles are available for direct ordering worldwide online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al., and through the usual trade channels (inc. Bertrams, Ingram, Baker & Taylor.)
Proposals are invited from prospective authors who should submit a completed Book Proposal Form. Books should be in the range of 30,000 to 50,000 words.
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Vol. 1. Odilon Redon: Écrits.
ISBN 0-947623-63-9. Published June 2005. This is the first edition of nine fictional writings by the French painter, Odilon Redon (1840-1916). The text has been established from a transcription made by André Mellerio (the original manuscript being unavailable). "The most interesting recent insight into Redon
and his work emerges from this slender edition of his own early writings,
carefully edited and presented by Claire Moran." |
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ISBN 0-947623-64-7. Published June 2005. An edition of the anonymous fifteenth-century French
translation of Alan of Lille’s ‘Liber Parabolarum’
which had never previously been edited. The 1492 print by Antoine Vérard
survives in fewer than a dozen copies. "The reader now has a reliable text of the
Paraboles ... Alan of Lille’s collection, whether in Latin
or in French, was an important work, both for the later Middle Ages
and for the humanistic learning of the Renaissance, and it can now be
studied both as a work in its own right and as part of the cultural
life of its time."
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Vol.
3. Letzte Chancen: Vier Einakter von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. ISBN 0-947623-65-5. Published October 2005. This edition will introduce readers to four virtually
unknown short plays by the woman who is today considered the best-known
German-speaking woman writer of the 19th century. "Meticulously edited ... In her informative and
very readable introductory essays, Kord traces Ebner-Eschenbach’s development
and reception as a dramatist, and presents the individual plays in an
engaging manner."
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Vol. 4. Macht des Weibes: Zwei historische Tragödien von Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Edited by Susanne Kord. (In German.) ISBN 0-947623-69-8. Published December 2005. A companion volume to Letzte
Chancen, this edition will introduce readers to two virtually
unknown tragedies by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach: Maria Stuart in
Schottland. Historische Tragödie; and Marie Roland. Trauerspiel
in fünf Aufzügen. "In her informative and very readable introductory
essays, Kord traces Ebner-Eschenbach’s development and reception as
a dramatist, and presents the individual plays in an engaging manner.
The perspective is particularly illuminating and subtly differentiated
in the case of the two historical tragedies, Maria Stuart in Schottland
and Marie Roland."
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Vol. 5. A Critical Edition of La tribu indienne; ou, Édouard
et Stellina by Lucien Bonaparte. ISBN 0-947623-66-3. Published October 2006. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The publication of this novel by the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte brings to light a fascinating lost text, making it readily available to scholars for the first time. It contributes to the recent re-evaluation of the French literary canon through consideration of key sentimental texts.
"This re-edition of a novel by Lucien Bonaparte, one of Napoleon’s younger brothers,
is the latest in the MHRA’s admirable series of critical texts ... [It] is to be welcomed as providing a new addition to
the corpus of Revolutionary literature available for study ... Cecilia Feilla’s introduction
is clear and concise, dealing briefly with the author’s life and situating the novel
within the tradition of sentimental exoticism."
"This is a fascinating reprint of the original edition including illustrations of the only novel ever written by Lucien Bonaparte ... [It] is of particular interest to anybody studying early nineteenth-century French politics."
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Vol.
6. Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters. ISBN 978-0-947623-70-8. Published October 2007. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This edition will provide a new translation and analysis of four of Dante’s Latin letters on political themes, highlighting the role of these letters not only as documents which emphasise and support the political views put forward most explicitly in the De monarchia, but also as pieces of persuasive and impassioned writing which, on many different levels, reflect the concerns of the author’s great poetic work, the Commedia.
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Vol. 7. La Disme de Penitanche
by Jehan de Journi. ISBN 0-947623-71-X. Published October 2006. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The book is an annotated edition and study of La Disme de Penitanche, a manual written in Old French verse, designed to help members of the laity prepare themselves for confession. Composed in 1288 by Jehan de Journi, the text provides a fascinating mixture of the learned and the popular. "Students of vernacular penitential texts will welcome this edition, particularly as
the editor provides extensive explanatory notes, interspersed with comments of linguistic
interest."
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Vol.
8. François II, roi de France by Charles-Jean-François
Hénault. ISBN 0-947623-67-1. Published November 2006. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The Président Hénault (1685-1770) wrote several plays including François II, roi de France, a five-act tragedy depicting ‘la jalousie des princes de sang contre messieurs de Guise’. First published in 1747, this play was considered by Hénault and his contemporaries to be the first of a new kind of theatre, one written specifically to be read rather than to be performed. It is therefore arguably the founding text of the tradition of armchair theatre that encompasses Diderot, Rétif de la Bretonne, Musset and Hugo. "This is a welcome edition and
a particularly timely one in the context of the current reappraisal of the minores and consequent refinement of our picture of the French Enlightenment, and of the
problematization of dramatic reception."
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Vol.
9. Istoire de la Chastelaine du Vergier et de Tristan le Chevalier.
ISBN 978-0-947623-68-5. Published July 2009. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This 15th-century text is a late prose version of the highly successful and much imitated Chastelaine de Vergi. The moral of the anonymous author's tale is that love stories need to be kept secret, and that discretion is a lover's best quality.
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Vol. 10. La Peyrouse dans l’Isle
de Tahiti, ou le Danger des Présomptions: drame politique. ISBN 0-947623-72-8. Published October 2006. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This anonymous play is based on two well-known episodes in Pacific exploration: the voyage of Louis de Bougainville around the world, and his arrival in Tahiti very soon after Samuel Wallis’ discovery of it, and the later voyage and disappearance of Jean-François de la Pérouse.
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Vol.
11. Casimir Britannicus. English Translations, Paraphrases, and Emulations of the
Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski. ISBN 978-0-947623-73-9. Published May 2008. No longer available. Superseded by the 2010 revised and expanded edition published as Critical Texts Vol. 25.
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Vol.
12. La Devineresse ou les faux enchantemens. By Jean Donneau
de Visé and Thomas Corneille. ISBN 978-0-947623-74-6. Published November 2007. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 A critical edition of the biggest box-office hit of seventeenth-century France whose extraordinary success depended on its historical context. |
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Vol.
13. Phosphorus Hollunder und Der Posten der Frau von
Louise von François. ISBN 978-0-947623-75-3. Published October 2008. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 François’s novels and novellas are notable for their strong story lines, rich prose and psychological realism. The two early novellas Phosphorus Hollunder and Der Posten der Frau (both 1857) illustrate the essential preoccupations of François’s work as a whole. "This handsome critical
edition of two of François’s lesser-known short stories from 1857 offers a valuable
reminder of the writer’s many merits as a storyteller."
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ISBN 978-0-947623-77-7. Published October 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This satirical poem, known popularly as the Miliade because of its thousand-verse length (in octosyllabic verse), was printed anonymously around 1636. The poem’s endurance and plentiful and specific political references make it a lively commentary encompassing discontent with the increasingly centralized government before the outbreak of the civil wars, the Frondes (1648–53). "Paul Scott’s edition is both meticulous and erudite ... [the] astute analysis of the political and literary significance
of the poem will be of broad interest to scholars who work on the political and cultural history of early modern France." |
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Vol. 15.
Ovide du remede d'amours. ISBN 978-0-947623-78-4. Published February 2008. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This edition presents a hitherto unpublished version of the Remedia amoris, thus expanding the corpus of materials available to students of the transmission of Ovid in the Middle Ages. It also provides, for the first time, a detailed survey of the existing versions of the Remedia. "This is a most carefully presented and legible edition ... The Notes themselves are rich in linguistic, literary and mythological information and useful commentary on salient translation techniques. A Glossary and Table of Proper Names complete this elegant edition." |
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Vol. 16. Angelo Beolco (il Ruzante), La prima oratione. ISBN 978-0-947623-79-1. Published March 2009. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This volume presents a full transcription of the three extant manuscripts of Angelo Beolco's Prima oratione, delivered to Cardinal Marco Cornaro in 1521 at his villa in Asolo subsequent to his entrance as bishop of Padua. "This volume is undoubtedly a welcome addition to our knowledge and understanding
of the most remarkable author-actor of the Italian Renaissance. This is
especially so textually, in its bringing a significant and neglected work—in terms
of theatre and ideas—to an anglophone audience, and in its raising provocative
questions about the degree of daring and the limits of the polemical in Ruzante." |
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Vol. 17. Richard Robinson, The Rewarde of Wickednesse. ISBN 978-0-947623-85-2. Published July 2009. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This volume provides the first printed critical edition of a text which has recently attracted the attention of scholars working on early modern English literature. |
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Vol. 18. Henry Crabb Robinson, Essays on Kant, Schelling, and German Aesthetics. ISBN 978-0-947623-88-3. Published October 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 It is usually assumed that the only British Romantic writer who engaged meaningfully with German philosophy was S. T. Coleridge. This edition disproves that assumption. The book collects thirteen essays and one set of lecture notes written by Henry Crabb Robinson during his period in Germany (1800-1805). "Robinson's expertise in German philosophy can now be studied in significant detail in the well-documented edition prepared by James Vigus ... Vigus has not only brought together for the first time a full collection of Robinson's essays on German Philosophy, he has made these bold forays into the complexities of Kant and Schelling readily accessible in his general Introduction ... and his notes on the origin and provenance of each of the manuscripts. His volume is a valuable resource ... Scholars of the reception of German Philosophy in the British Romantic period will find it worthwhile to put Robinson alongside of Coleridge at the top of their reading list ... [A] remarkable achievement."
"Vigus' [edition] bears impressive witness to Robinson's expertise and fills a void [...] the corpus of published and manuscript material remains a fascinating guide to the dynamic intellectual and literary culture of Germany at the beginning of the nineteenth century. [...] Vigus' authoritative, scholarly edition of Robinson's Essays is an essential text for anyone interested in late Enlightenment and early Romantic thought in Germany and in what Robinson did to disseminate that thought beyond the borders of the German-speaking world." |
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Vol. 19. A Sixteenth-Century Arthurian Romance: L’Hystoire de Giglan filz de messire Gauvain qui fut roy de Galles. Et de Geoffroi de Maience son compaignon. ISBN 978-0-947623-89-0. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Giglan is an unusual prose rewriting of two important, entertaining medieval Arthurian verse romances, the late-twelfth century Le Bel inconnu of Renaut de Beaujeu, and the anonymous thirteenth-century Occitan Roman de Jaufre, one of only two full-length romans from the south. L’Hystoire was last published in Lyons in 1539, and went through at least five editions in the first three decades of the century. |
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Vol. 20. Evariste-Désiré de Parny, Le Paradis perdu. ISBN 978-0-947623-90-6. Published July 2009. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Evariste-Désiré de Parny, though largely forgotten now, was well known in the nineteenth century for his lyric poems, especially the Poésies Erotiques (1778-81), and the prose-poems in Chansons Madécasses (1787). He also wrote much humorous verse, including the anti-religious La Guerre des Dieux (1799) and Le Paradis perdu (1805). The latter is a parody of Milton’s Paradise Lost in four relatively short cantos. It gives a central place to the War in Heaven, casting Satan as a revolutionary. It is highly entertaining in itself, and also an important example of parody as critical response to an original text. "Robertson’s authorship of a volume on mock epic, including Parny’s, and Seth’s
extensive work on the poet make them an ideal editorial team for this volume."
"it is particularly interesting to have this careful, commentated and annotated edition of Parny's ironical, erotic and witty version of the Fall" |
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Vol. 21. Stéphanie de Genlis, ‘Histoire de la duchesse de C***’ . ISBN 978-0-947623-95-1. Published October 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The Histoire de la Duchesse de C*** is a masterful blend of the sentimental and the Gothic genres. This critical edition is accompanied by an introduction to the text and author, a selected bibliography, and an original modern English translation of the text. |
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Vol. 22. Louis-Charles Fougeret de Monbron, Le Cosmopolite, ou le citoyen du monde (1750). ISBN 978-1-907322-04-4. Published June 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 A critical edition of Fougeret de Monbron’s Le Cosmopolite, ou le citoyen du monde (1750). The introductory notes focus on the links to Voltaire’s Candide and show how Monbron’s cynical memoirs combined with another important narrative source of Candide, La Place’s Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé (1750).
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Vol. 23. La Chastelaine du Vergier. Livre d’amours du Chevalier et de la Dame Chastellaine du Vergier. ISBN 978-1-907322-05-1. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 A critical edition of the 1540 version of the Chastelaine de Vergi story. Like the original 13th-century text, this verse telling sets out to teach the lesson that love stories are best kept secret. |
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Vol. 24. Narcisse Berchère, Le Désert de Suez: cinq mois dans l'Isthme. ISBN 978-1-907322-10-5. Published October 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Narcisse Berchère was commissioned by Ferdinand de Lesseps to make a visual record of the first phase of the construction of the Suez Canal. To this end, he spent five months in the Isthmus, from November 1861 to March 1862. He also gave a verbal account of his experiences in a book, published by Jules Hetzel in 1863, an edition of which is presented here. "This re-edition and informative introduction by Barbara Wright thus puts back into circulation a text that self-consciously
promotes the notion that ‘canaliser’ is a synonym of ‘coloniser’. ... This re-edition is invaluable, since the twenty illustrations from Le Tour du
monde of 1863, presented in the appendix, are the sole survivors of the commission, a welcome glimpse of Berchère’s oeuvre, lost in Versailles during the Commune." |
Vol. 25. Casimir Britannicus. English Translations, Paraphrases, and Emulations of the
Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski. Revised and expanded edition. ISBN 978-1-907322-12-9. Published October 2010. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 [Supersedes Critical Texts Vol. 11, ISBN 978-0-947623-73-9.] Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (1595-1640) was known in his lifetime as the Christian Horace. This edition includes all known English translations of his poems. The texts are accompanied by an introduction presenting the biography and works of Sarbiewski, as well as a short critical analysis of the translations included in the volume. Acclaim for the first edition: "These days, enthusiasts of Neo-Latin poetry in general, and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Sarbievius) in particular, are few and far between. Perhaps only they will recognize the great importance of this new anthology, but all who do take cognizance of it will receive it with gratitude."
"Casimir Britannicus is a landmark publication."
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Vol. 26. Eugénie et Mathilde by Madame de Souza. ISBN 978-1-907322-13-6. Autumn 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The purpose of this book is to make available to scholars and students the most important of Madame de Souza’s novels in a way that the French Revolution or political context could be fully understood alongside the literary and social references within the text. |
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ISBN 978-1-907322-15-0. Published March 2011. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Aza ou le Nègre is a slave novel that was published anonymously in 1792, during the French Revolution. It differs from other contemporaneous works like Jean-François de Saint-Lambert’s Ziméo and de Germaine de Staël’s Mirza because, despite their advocacy for abolition, Ziméo and Mirza remain largely Eurocentric. "This is a most welcome addition to the growing number of previously little-known
and largely inaccessible texts representing Blacks republished in recent years. ... Aza ou le Nègre would make an excellent
text for undergraduate study." |
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Vol. 28. Eliza Haywood, 'The Fortunate Foundlings'. ISBN 978-1-907322-17-4. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This edition pays particular attention to intercultural exchange between France and England in the 18th century, of which Haywood’s novel and its translation/adaptation by Crébillon is a perfect illustration. |
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Vol. 29. Edward Kimber, 'The Happy Orphans'. ISBN 978-1-907322-18-1. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This novel is the English translation and adaptation of Crébillon’s novel Les Heureux Orphelins (1754), which in its turn was the translation /adaptation of an English novel by Eliza Haywood, The Fortunate Foundlings (1744). The introduction to the critical edition will therefore pay particular attention to intercultural exchange between France and England in the 18th century. |
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Vol. 30. Lodovico Dolce, 'Dialogo [...] della institution delle donne. Secondo li tre stati, che cadono nella vita humana' (1545). ISBN 978-1-907322-24-2. Spring 2014. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 A modern edition of the princeps of Lodovico Dolce’s Dialogo [...] della institution delle donne, published in Venice by Gabriele Giolito in 1545. This is a conduct literature text for women, in three books, which enjoyed good editorial success in sixteenth-century Italy. |
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Vol. 31. Les Costeaux, ou les marquis friands, comédie, by Jean Donneau de Visé. ISBN 978-1-907322-33-4. Autumn 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 A critical edition of the 1665 one-act gastronomical play Les Costeaux, ou les marquis friands. Les Costeaux has often been attributed to Claude Deschamps Villiers, a minor playwright associated with the Troupe royale of the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris. There are good reasons to doubt this attribution, however, and Jean Donneau de Visé is a much more plausible candidate. |
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Vol. 32. Comte d'Ételan, Works. ISBN 978-1-907322-40-2. Summer 2013. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Publishing Ételan's extant works for the first time, Scott's edition will provide the most complete biography of this satirical poet of Louis XIII’s reign who was was close friends with the chronicler Tallemant des Réaux, and on intimate terms with the marquise de Sablé. |
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Vol. 33. Rétif de la Bretonne's Ingénue Saxancour. ISBN 978-1-907322-47-1. Summer 2013. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Set in Paris in the 1780s, Rétif de la Bretonne's Ingénue Saxancour is a thinly veiled account of his daughter's disastrous marriage to an abusive husband. Published in 1789, Rétif's novel scandalized the public with its graphic descriptions of his son-in-law's sexual perversity and brutal violence. |
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Vol. 34. Henry Crabb Robinson: Diary of a Pedestrian Tour (1801). ISBN 978-1-907322-48-8. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This critical edition of Henry Crabb Robinson’s manuscript diary of his walking tour of 1801, mainly in Saxony, makes available an almost unknown text, outstanding for its coherence, readability and meticulous record of places visited, people encountered and books devoured. |
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Vol. 35. Walter Pater: Imaginary Portraits. ISBN 978-1-907322-55-6. Spring 2013. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 This edition brings together the four imaginary portraits published in volume form by Pater in 1887 with other of his imaginary portraits, only published in periodical form and not collected during Pater’s lifetime, giving a much wider representation of Pater as a writer of fiction than previously. |
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Vol. 36. Marie-Josèphe de Monbart: Lettres tahitiennes. ISBN 978-1-907322-61-7. Spring 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Marie-Josèphe de Monbart, a disciple of Rousseau, published her epistolary novel, Lettres tahitiennes, in 1784. The work is directly inspired by French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville’s 1771 Voyage autour du monde and its Tahitian chapters. |
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Vol. 37. C. E. Boniface, Relation du naufrage du navire français L’Eole sur la côte de la Caffrerie, en avril 1829. ISBN 978-1-907322-64-8. Summer 2012. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 The narrative recounts the fate of the Eole, a French vessel wrecked beyond the eastern border of the Cape, and the experience of the eight survivors, their encounter with the ‘savages’ of the region, their journey overland to Grahamstown, followed by their return by ship to Cape Town. Boniface’s text is of interest to the modern reader for a range of cultural, historical, literary, and biographical reasons. |
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Vol. 38. Juan de Valdés, Diálogo de la lengua. A Diplomatic Edition. ISBN 978-1-907322-82-2. Summer 2013. Pbk £9.99 / $15.99 / €11.99 Composed in Naples in the 1530s, Juan de Valdés’s Diálogo de la lengua occupies a special place in Spanish humanism, just as its author is widely acknowledged by Renaissance scholars as one of the most important intellectuals of 16th-century Western Europe. This edition reflects on the complex early history of the earliest extant primary text (MS 8629, held in the Spanish National Library), which is unanimously accepted as the most reliable of the three): whether or not it could have been copied in Valdés’s lifetime, how and when it reached Spain from Naples (where it was written), its real intended recipients, its circulation amongst a circle of Castilian friends, and how it managed to evade the ubiquitous eyes of the Inquisition. |
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A series of editions of eighteenth-century French drama
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