The Reception of English Puritan Literature in Germany
Peter Damrau
Bithell Series of Dissertations 29 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 6630 July 2006

  • ‘Damrau’s study is a well researched and exceptionally well documented inquiry into the relationship between Puritanism and Pietism that reaches beyond the theological into the linguistic and literary disciplines. The extensive bibliography offers dictionaries, primary and secondary literature of relevant works in both the English and German literatures and a refreshingly new approach.’ — Helene M. Riley, Germanic Notes and Reviews 30.1, 2007, 56-59
  • ‘This book makes a valuable contribution to current understanding of the presence of British thinking and texts in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany and is to be commended for its detailed analysis, its cross-disciplinary approach and its clear argument.’ — Nils Langer, Modern Language Review 103, 2008, 267-68 (full text online)

Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth's Writing in the 1920s
Jon Hughes
Bithell Series of Dissertations 30 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 6730 July 2006

  • ‘Hughes’s readings of Roth’s texts are fresh and compelling. One may disagree with certain details, but undeniably this new study considerably expands the scope of the discussions about Roth and his intellectual environment in the light of current critical debates and theories. Hughes presents his arguments clearly and succinctly. The scholarly documentation is impeccable, and the book, equipped with a comprehensive bibliography and an extensive index, is as user-friendly in its organization as it is sophisticated in its scholarly narrative.’ — Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Modern Language Review 102.4, 2007, 1188-90 (full text online)
  • ‘A book-length study in English of the writings of Joseph Roth is greatly to be welcomed... Hughes’s principal thesis — that Roth is not simply the author at odds with his times, as which he is often represented, but one who finds his own ways of confronting the experiences of cultural fragmentation that the twentieth-century world brings — is engagingly presented and makes the volume as a whole a serious contribution to Roth scholarship.’ — David Midgley, Austrian Studies 15, 2007, 190-191 (full text online)
  • ‘A substantial, original, and methodologically sound piece of work... This is a well-written and thought-provoking study and will be of interest to students and academics alike.’ — Helen Chambers, Modern Austrian Literature 40, 2007, 101-03

Camorristi, Politicians and Businessmen: The Transformation of Organized Crime in Post-War Naples
Felia Allum
Italian Perspectives 111 December 2006

From Florence to the Heavenly City: The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante
Claire E. Honess
Italian Perspectives 1324 May 2006

Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre
Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 155 September 2006

  • ‘Handsomely produced (a tribute to its publishers and copy-editor), meticulously researched, agreeably written,with copious notes, a generous bibliography, and English translationsof all the original quotations, it is packed full with fascinating and thought-provoking information.’ — Eric Haywood, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1138 (full text online)
  • ‘Vanno complimentati, infine, anche gli editori di Legenda (la fruttuosa collaborazione tra Maney Publishing e la Modern Humanities Research Association) che hanno curato questa pubblicazione impeccabile, e che hanno dato ampio spazio — scelta felice — ai citati originali in italiano (provveduti sempre di una traduzione inglese della stessa studiosa). In aggiunta alle note concise poste alla fine di ogni capitolo, la bibliografia e l’indice generale che concludono il libro costituiranno un utile strumento di consultazione ai molti studenti e ricercatori che troveranno una ricchissima fonte d’informazioni preziose (dalla descrizione meticolosa delle innumerevoli opere individuali, al contesto sociale, culturale e politico sempre ottimamente documentato) in questa monografia, la quale combina una chiarezza di argomentazione con un’analisi sfaccettata di un fenomeno significativo — se non proprio determinante — nel campo culturale della prima epoca moderna.’ — Rolien Scheffer, Italian Studies 64.2, Autumn 2009

Sweet Thunder: Music and Libretti in 1960s Italy
Vivienne Suvini-Hand
Italian Perspectives 167 December 2006

  • ‘Chapter 7 displays the dominating element of the five compositions: the reassertion of spiritual values over the material values of 1960s Italy. This distinctive tone makes these compositions uniquely commendable for further investigations into their influence on Italy’s artistic canon.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011
  • ‘A welcome addition to the literature on recent opera, valuable to both the musicologist and the literary scholar... The literary readings are so detailed and sophisticated that it is impossible to do justice to them here... Definitely recommended reading for those with an interest in post-war Italian culture.’ — Emiliano Ricciardi, Cambridge Opera Journal 20.3, 299-302

Bakhtin between East and West: Cross-Cultural Transmission
Karine Zbinden
Legenda (General Series) 7 December 2006

  • ‘Zbinden exhibits considerable theoretical insight and a capacity for nuanced analysis throughout the work.’ — R. Coates, Slavonic and East European Review 87.2, 2009, 344-46 (full text online)
  • ‘Exceptional new work being produced on the Russian polymath, some of the most interesting of which was coming out of the University of Sheffield, whose Bakhtin Centre supports the work of an outstanding group of language theorists... Karine Zbinden and Alastair Renfrew are two of the excellent younger scholars from the Bakhtin Centre.’ — Michael Bernard-Donals, Slavic Review 68.1, Spring 2009, 193-95

Bernardin de Saint-Pierre: A Life of Culture
Malcolm Cook
Legenda (General Series) 5 September 2006

  • ‘We tend to think of the author of Paul et Virginie as a one-hit wonder. This new biography shows that he was a man of many parts... Malcolm Cook draws on his unrivalled knowledge of Bernardin's manuscripts to give the life and works a personal and "cultural" frame.’ — Robin Howells, Modern Language Review 104.1, January 2009, 203-04 (full text online)
  • ‘An intriguing book, full of surprises: a window into the mind of the researcher as well into the life of his subject.’ — Dena Goodman, French Studies 479
  • ‘Maintaining an almost scientific objectivity, the biographer proceeds with caution in his assessments, reevaluating and correcting previous sources without speculating unnecessarily in the absence of evidence. From this process emerges the unembellished and contained sketch of a writer who lived a full and interesting life during challenging times. Specialists and general readers alike will certainly want to know more about Bernardin after reading this biography.’ — Christina Ionescu, French Review 82.1, 2009, 159-60
  • ‘Commentateur des œuvres de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, historien de la littérature de la période révolutionnaire, particulièrement intéressé par les questions de réception (comme en témoignent les colloques qu’il a organisés sur les réécritures et sur la critique), Cook donne une biographie qui est au confluent de ses thèmes d’étude de prédilection, et qui doit être lue parallèlement à ses travaux antérieurs.’ — Youmna Charara, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 22.3, 2010, 735-36
  • ‘This is a wonderfully readable and insightful book, exceptionally richly illustrated with unpublished manuscript documents, and written with a true love for its subject.’ — Mark Darlow, Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies 33.2, June 2010, 284

Defective Inspectors: Crime Fiction Pastiche in Late-Twentieth-Century French Literature
Simon Kemp
Legenda (General Series) 5 September 2006

  • ‘A detailed and compelling analysis... This is a lucidly executed, perceptive and celebratory exploration of postmodern pastiche that clearly demonstrates the wealth of interest for narrative analysis that lies implicit within its comic absurdities, and Kemp assembles his own readings with the kind of rigour and conviction (and occasionally, humour) of which any great master detective could be proud.’ — Victoria Best, French Studies 505-06

Modernist Song: The Poetry of Tristan Tzara
Stephen Forcer
Legenda (General Series) 17 January 2006

  • ‘Writing with evident pleasure, Forcer starts from an accessible premiss to go on to explore exciting new ground, teasing out a surprising array of readings and styles... Indeed, as Forcer demonstrates that Tzara’s poetry is a rich and diverse body of work in which classic avant-garde tropes feature alongside more established poetic practices and vocabulary, he clearly exposes both the critical inadequacy of Tzara's epithet as the "Father of Dada" and, on a more general level, the need for a much more inclusive historiography of avant-garde creativity. All of which makes this powerfully argued book a most welcome and valuable publication.’ — Jo Langley, Modern Language Review 104.2, April 2009, 575-76 (full text online)
  • ‘Stephen Forcer's book impresses in that it does not use the myth [of Dada] as a ready-made prop with which to proclaim its subject's importance... What distinguishes Modernist Song, above all, is Forcer's sustained and precise analysis of selected poems, his own interrogations of signifying play, which draw on a range of theoretical tools and critical references.’ — Ruth Hemus, French Studies 492-93

Spanish Romanticism and the Uses of History: Ideology and the Historical Imagination
Derek Flitter
Legenda (General Series) 17 January 2006

  • ‘La perspectiva de Flitter elabora perspicaces análisis de un proyecto intelectual, el historiocismo schlegeliano al hispánico modo, con cierto recorrido histórico en la cultura española moderna.’ — Íñigo Sánchez Llama, Iberoamericana 8.30, 2008, 263-65

The Extreme In-Between: Jean Paulhan's Place in the Twentieth Century
Anna-Louise Milne
Legenda (General Series) 24 May 2006

  • ‘Lights up the firmament of scholarship on Paulhan with brilliance... With wit, exuberance and theoretical sure-footedness, Milne takes us through a series of close readings. Not only does The Extreme In-Between reveal the astonishing reach and depth of Paulhan’s thinking, but it paves the way for a new conception of the relationship of language to political action and historical event, one that has a remarkably contemporary (twenty-first century?) resonance to it.’ — Michael Syrotinski, French Studies 491-92
  • ‘Tout bien considéré, l'ouvrage dense et méticuleusement relu de Milne vient ajouter de nouvelles perspectives aux réévaluations actuelles de Paulhan.’ — Stephen Steele, French Review 81.5, 2008, 1007-08

Towards a New Material Aesthetics: Bakhtin, Genre and the Fates of Literary Theory
Alastair Renfrew
Legenda (General Series) 7 December 2006

  • ‘Alastair Renfrew's book offers an intricate and critical reading of what he sees as the decisive moment of origin of European literary theory in order then to fashion from that reading a (post-)theoretical position for our own time.’ — Graham Pechey, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1184-85 (full text online)
  • ‘Genre becomes in Renfrew's treatment of it a useful map for guidance along some of the more intriguing twists and turns in the Bakhtin canon... An important addition to the growing library of Bakhtiniana.’ — Michael Holquist, Slavonic and East European Review 87.1, 2009, 114-15 (full text online)
  • ‘Exceptional new work being produced on the Russian polymath, some of the most interesting of which was coming out of the University of Sheffield, whose Bakhtin Centre supports the work of an outstanding group of language theorists... Karine Zbinden and Alastair Renfrew are two of the excellent younger scholars from the Bakhtin Centre.’ — Michael Bernard-Donals, Slavic Review 68.1, Spring 2009, 193-95

Rilke's Poetics of Becoming
Ben Hutchinson
Legenda (General Series) 5 September 2006

  • ‘Eine sorgfältige und konzentrierte Analyse der Dichtungen des jungen Rilke... Die sehr gut lesbare und Beachtung verdienende Studie von Ben Hutchinson hat hier einen bemerkenswerten Schritt auf dem Weg zu einem umfassenden Rilke-Verständnis getan.’ — Sascha Löwenstein, IASLonline online
  • ‘Overall this is a well-written book, offering both a coherent original thesis and perceptive analyses of individual poems.’ — Helen Bridge, Modern Language Review 103.1, January 2008, 282-83 (full text online)
  • ‘A judicious study of impressive scope.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.4, 2011, 480

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

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

Selfless Cinema?: Ethics and French Documentary
Sarah Cooper
Research Monographs in French Studies 2017 January 2006

  • ‘This engagingly written and lucid examination of the relevance of Levinasian thought for cinema... diligently attends to the ways in which creators, through a variety of techniques, unsettle conventional boundaries and relationships within documentary film and persuasively argues that they thus encourage new ways of seeing amongst viewers.’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 110
  • ‘An important and original intervention... Selfless Cinema? is impressive in the range and depth of ideas it addresses within a relatively short span, which makes it highly practicable. I have assigned individual chapters in an undergraduate seminar on contemporary French cinema with very positive results, and the entire book would serve as an excellent cornerstone for a graduate course.’ — Anne Kern, French Review 83.5, 2010, 1092-93

Poisoned Words: Slander and Satire in Early Modern France
Emily Butterworth
Research Monographs in French Studies 2124 May 2006

  • ‘Emily Butterworth’s thoughtful and elegantly argued study... makes an important contribution to that burgeoning area of critical study where literature can never be conceived outside the notion of law, and in this case, the law itself.’ — Henry Phillips, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 852-53 (full text online)
  • ‘Her excellent book will be of interest to anybody concerned with rhetoric, polemic and the fashioning (and unfashioning) of early modern reputations.’ — Timothy Chesters, French Studies 469-70
  • ‘Butterworth’s valuable work clearly shows that slander and satire are linked to other important preoccupations of the time (such as the use of rhetoric and the formation of identity) and brings a welcome focus on three writers, each of whom addresses one of Lucian’s positions: slanderer, audience and victim.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 45.3 (2009), 351-54

Dilettantism and its Values: From Weimar Classicism to the fin de siècle
Richard Hibbitt
Studies In Comparative Literature 924 May 2006

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

The Fantastic in France and Russia in the Nineteenth Century: In Pursuit of Hesitation
Claire Whitehead
Studies In Comparative Literature 1024 May 2006

  • ‘This recent volume from the Legenda imprint maintains the high standards of production and academic excellence in the field of comparative literature that readers have come to expect from the marque.’ — Leon Burnett, Slavonic and East European Review 86.4, 2008, 707-09 (full text online)
  • ‘Most of all benefits through its comparative analyses of chosen texts; this not only makes obvious the "pan-European" context in which the fantastic flourished during the nineteenth century but will, it is to be hoped, inspire others to tinker further with some of the concepts applied here to the fantastic, especially in relation to other examples of Gothic fiction.’ — Slobodan Sugur, Modern Language Review 104.3, 2009, 824-25 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a very readable work, which constitutes a valuable complement to Todorov's 1970 "Introduction à la littérature fantastique."’Forum for Modern Language Studies 235)
  • ‘Essential reading for scholars of the fantastic; I also recommend it to instructors, who can use Whitehead's readings of these classic texts to astound their students by revealing the way that language works to produce the thrills of the genre.’ — Lynn Patyk, Russian Review 68.1, May 2009, 129-30

Redefining Regional French: Koinéization and Dialect Levelling in Northern France
David Hornsby
Studies In Linguistics 324 May 2006

  • ‘A worthy contribution to the field of sociolinguistic enquiry, and a welcome reminder of the importance in recording social history of dialect studies such as this.’ — Ken George, French Studies 62.4, 2008, 518-19
  • ‘This stimulating book is written with commendable clarity and succinctness, making the more general sections in particular both extremely useful and highly accessible to undergraduate students. Legenda, the publishers, are also to be commended for their usual attractive presentation.’ — Tim Pooley, Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur 119.1, 2009, 82-83