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)
Alienation and Theatricality: Diderot after Brecht
Phoebe von Held
Studies In Comparative Literature 17•25 March 2011
- ‘This is a rich and rewarding study that opens up important new perspectives not only on its two chosen thinkers, but also on the questions of acting both onstage and in society more generally.’ — Joseph Harris, French Studies 66.4 (October 2012), 557
- ‘[Held's] general principle is surprisingly simple and compelling: While the 'self-alienating artifice' of Diderot's calculating actor succeeds for the most part at immedsing the audience to identification and illusion, there are moments at which it suddenly comes to the fore... Jolted by this 'sudden emergence of alienation', the spectator is now 'faced with her own involvement in the operation of delusion'.’ — Florian Nikolas Becker, Brecht Yearbook 37 (2012), 253-58
Authorial Echoes: Textuality and Self-Plagiarism in the Narrative of Luigi Pirandello
Catherine O'Rawe
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2005
- ‘A short review cannot do justice to this arresting critical work. A combination of bold ideas with a meticulous attention to detail and a broad theoretical foundation characterizes O'Rawe's critical approach. Insights are always well substantiated with abundant evidence... Both a major contribution to Pirandello scholarship and a seminal challenge to narrative criticism.’ — Jennifer Lorch, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1140-41 (full text online)
Bertolt Brecht's Adaptations for the Berliner Ensemble
Arrigo Subiotto
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 8•1 January 1975
Between Two Worlds: The autos sacramentales of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Amy Fuller
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 100•22 June 2015
The Burgtheater and Austrian Identity: Theatre and Cultural Politics in Vienna, 1918-38
Robert Pyrah
Legenda (General Series) •5 July 2007
- ‘This excellent volume provides an invaluable extra dimension to previous publications on Austrian theatre between the wars through the rigorous use of archival material, reinforcing and enhancingwork based mainly on texts, reports, and reviews in the Viennese press and journals. This is a work which will be important not only to literary historians, particularly of the theatre, but also to political historians, demonstrating as it does how the history of that troubled period in Austria directly affected the theatre.’ — John Warren, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1164-65 (full text online)
- ‘A significant and welcome contribution to the slowly expanding body of work examining the interface of culture and politics in the First Austrian Republic... Original and well-researched.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies 231)
The Catalonian Journey of American Drama 1909-2000: From Jimmy Valentine to The Vagina Monologues
Ramón Espejo 
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 59•19 February 2024
Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht
M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 21•1 January 1985
The Choreography of Modernism in France: La Danseuse, 1830-1930
Julie Townsend
Research Monographs in French Studies 28•12 April 2010
- ‘An engaging and concise chronology of modernism through dance, with the danseuse constituting the correlation between performing, visual, and literary modernisms.’ — Paul Ryan, French Studies 65.4, 2011, 545-46
Classical Comedy 1508-1786: A Legacy from Italy and France
Richard Andrews
Italian Perspectives 55•20 October 2022
- ‘An encyclopedic contribution to the history of comedy, with a particular focus on the transformation of comedy in Paris, where the greatest playwrights preserved the genre’s positive vision and harnessed the vitality of the Italian “Arte” to create their more serious comedies of character... The “Analyses” section is particularly valuable. It is divided between technical questions and plot or character issues, and the technical discussions, informed by Andrews extraordinary knowledge and deep understanding of how comedy works, are outstanding.’ — 552-54, Annali d'Italianistica 2023, 41, Laurie Shepard
A Critical, Old-Spelling Edition of the Birth of Merlin (Q1662)
Joanna Udall
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 31•1 January 1991
Divided Loyalties: East German Writers and the Politics of German Division 1945-1953
Peter Davies
Bithell Series of Dissertations 24 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 49•1 January 2000
Echo's Voice: The Theatres of Sarraute, Duras, Cixous and Renaude
Mary Noonan
Research Monographs in French Studies 36•1 July 2014
- ‘Noonan’s book relies on close readings of extracts from the plays that she analyses, although she never loses sight of the importance of performance and the theatre. Noonan uses voice to situate the work of her playwrights in the context of theories of writing, and so is likely to appeal to scholars interested in the ways in which critical or philosophical thought is taken up differently by (women) writers working in a different genre.’ — Martina Williams, French Studies 69.2, April 2015, 262
- ‘Noonan's fascinating and comprehensive work, solidly grounded in psychoanalytical theory, successfully uncovers the complexities, intentions, and modalities of the audio-vocal theatre she sets out to explore, revealing both the specificity of the authors she addresses and the overarching unity of their focus, as each one purposed to create a new form of auditory theatre.’ — Kelsey L. Haskett, H-France 15, 2015
- ‘What is particularly appealing is that the emphasis on the materiality of the spoken word that might be enjoyed for its affective and rhythmic qualities indicates a turn towards affective modes of theatre. While studies such as Lehmann’s Post- dramatic Theatre discuss this experiential turn in relation to stage practices, it is here investigated from the border of the text.’ — Cara Berger, New Theatre Quarterly 31.3, August 2015, 296
- ‘...While the parallels drawn between Sarraute, Duras and Cixous are interesting in their own right, the inclusion of a fourth, more recent playwright, Renaude, also illustrates the productive continu- ation of the experimentation of the earlier generation. For all of these reasons and more, Noonan’s study will be of interest to scholars of theatre and voice, of French women’s writing and of psychoanalytic theories of language, body and gender.’ — Julia Waters, Modern and Contemporary France 2015
- ‘Mary Noonan’s deeply researched study offers some very provocative thinking about contemporary French theatre... Noonan’s subtle analyses of plays and her carefully researched descriptions of productions make palpable the uncanny ambience that she applauds in these works.’ — Judith Miller, Modern Drama 59.1, Spring 2016
- ‘A thought-provoking perspective on the plays of four French women writers whose theatrical innovations have largely remained overlooked.’ — Richard J. Gray II, Irish Journal of French Studies 15, 2016, 141-42
El camino inverso: del cine al teatro: La vida en un hilo, de Edgar Neville y Mi adorado Juan, de Miguel Mihura
Joanna Bardzińska
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 91•1 May 2014
- ‘Bardzińska has provided the reader with a wealth of detail and the text will be of interest to scholars of the ‘otra generación’, and of value to those researching Neville, Mihura and/or their works created for screen and stage, as well as those interested in approaches to reverse adaptation more broadly.’ — Rhiannon McGlade, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 94, 2017, 1246-47
The Experience of Colour in Lorca's Theatre
Jade Boyd
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 54•13 September 2022
- ‘Boyd is sensitive to what is left out as well as what is explicit. She thus underlines the absence in this tragedy of stage directions regarding lighting. She also reads ‘verbal colour’ into objects, food and animals, so the mention of frogs, chocolate, earth, fire and goldfinches becomes part of an imagined canvas of images, sometimes as potent as what we can see on stage.’ — John London, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 100.6, 2023, 930-32 (full text online)
The First English Translations of Molière: Drama in Flux 1663-1732
Suzanne Jones
Transcript 13•28 September 2020
Force from Nietzsche to Derrida
Clare Connors
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2010
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)
Franz Grillparzer’s Dramatic Heroines: Theatre and Women’s Emancipation in Nineteenth-Century Austria
Matthew McCarthy-Rechowicz
Germanic Literatures 1•25 May 2018
Gadda and Beckett: Storytelling, Subjectivity and Fracture
Katrin Wehling-Giorgi
Italian Perspectives 29•1 November 2014
- ‘Katrin Wehling-Giorgi’s comparative reading of the works of two giants of European literature is both enlightening and fascinating... The book is written in an elegant style and has the great merit of spelling out with admirable clarity the philosophical implications of Gadda’s and Beckett’s narrative projects.’ — Olivia Santovetti, Modern Language Review 112.1, January 2017, 225-27 (full text online)
Genet's Genres of Politics
Mairéad Hanrahan
Research Monographs in French Studies 50•22 April 2023
Georg Büchner's 'Dantons Tod': A Reappraisal
Dorothy James
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 16•1 January 1982
Goethe and Patriarchy: Faust and the Fates of Desire
James Simpson
Legenda (General Series) •2 January 1999
- notice, Germanistik 41.3-4, 2000, 921
- ‘Simpson argues that Goethe's work, in essence, constitutes an act of self-diagnosis and therapy... his paradigm is not just Freudian, but also implicitly Jungian.’ — Paul Bishop, Modern Language Review 96.2, 2001, 566-7 (full text online)
- ‘This book is not brilliant: it is too carefully argued and clearly written to deserve that flashy label of the day. A more apt descriptor might be formidable, both for its ambition and for its achievement. Simpson has undertaken nothing less than the elucidation of the paradigm that was central to all of Goethe's intellectual, personal, scientific and poetic concerns, the "ur-fantasy that is a fantasy of origins"... In the best tradition of British literary criticism, Simpson writes in a lively, engaging style that does not need jargon... No one working seriously on Goethe or on Faust can ignore the challenge of this study.’ — Arnd Bohm, Seminar 41.1, 2005, 73-74
Identity and Transformation in the Plays of Alexis Piron
Derek Connon
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007
- ‘What emerges from Connon’s analyses is the sheer vitality of Piron’s production, its sometimes "anarchic" inventiveness, and its propensity to question hierarchies and cross boundaries of genre... I recommend this book highly.’ — Mark Darlow, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 855-56 (full text online)
- ‘This is a particularly good-looking book, with attractive hardcover, smart format, quality white paper and lovely typesetting. It boasts the kind of finish that just makes reading particularly pleasant, and all the more so when its content inspires one to return to a relatively forgotten playwright who clearly deserves more attention than his Villon-like epitaph irreverently suggests: ‘Ci-gît Piron, qui ne fut rien,/Pas même académicien’.’ — Síofra Pierse, French Studies 477-78
Il teatro di Eduardo De Filippo: La crisi della famiglia patriarcale
Donatella Fischer
Italian Perspectives 17•14 November 2007