Agostino Valier, Instituzione d'ogni stato lodevole delle donne cristiane
Edited by Francesco Lucioli
Critical Texts 43•1 June 2015

Angelo Beolco (il Ruzante), La prima oratione
Edited by Linda L. Carroll
Critical Texts 16•9 March 2009

  • ‘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.’ — Ronnie Ferguson, Modern Language Review 105.2, 2010, 576-79 (full text online)
  • ‘A complete scholarly edition of the work transcribing all three manuscript versions of the oration ... This volume should be welcomed by scholars of the period.’ — Martin W. Walsh, Sixteenth Century Journal XLIV:2, 2013, 618-19

Antonio Malatesti, La Tina. Equivoci rusticali
Edited by Davide Messina
Critical Texts 41•1 March 2014

  • ‘Dobbiamo rendere merito a Davide Messina, Senior Lecturer presso l’Università di Edimburgo e fine studioso di letteratura italiana del Seicento, se possiamo leggere ed apprezzare i cinquanta sonetti che compongono la raccolta poetica’ — Mario Ceroti, Mosaici online at www.mosaici.org.uk, 2014

Authority, Innovation and Early Modern Epistemology: Essays in Honour of Hilary Gatti
Edited by Martin McLaughlin, Ingrid D. Rowland and Elisabetta Tarantino
Legenda (General Series) •9 October 2015

Boccaccio and the Book: Production and Reading in Italy 1340-1520
Rhiannon Daniels
Italian Perspectives 19•17 July 2009

  • ‘This descriptive study provides many details that will benefit any scholar interested in the reception of Boccaccio’s works before the transformations they undergo in the later Cinquecento.’ — Martin Eisner, Renaissance Quarterly 63.2, 2010, 545-46
  • ‘Original and highly detailed... Chapter 1 could usefully be recommended to students of the history of the book in Italy for the clarity with which it presents all of the aspects that need to be considered in a discussion of readership, reception, production, and paratext, in both manuscripts and printed books... A significant contribution to the history of the book in Italy.’ — Jane Everson, Modern Language Review 106.2, April 2011, 564-66 (full text online)
  • ‘This book is a valuable and stimulating contribution to the reception history of Boccaccio. Particularly interesting is the way that Daniels looks at manuscripts and printed editions that have not been given their due, and the reader will constantly come across intriguing details.’ — K. P. Clarke, Medium Aevum 74, 2010

Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture's Appropriation of a Baroque Genius
Laura Rorato
Italian Perspectives 30•1 November 2014

Chivalry, Academy, and Cultural Dialogues: The Italian Contribution to European Culture
Edited by Stefano Jossa and Giuliana Pieri
Italian Perspectives 37•19 December 2016

  • ‘An interesting aspect is the rhythmical alternation of the contributions, organized in an almost Dantesque numerological order. Each section counts six chapters and is opened by an extraordinarily distinguished scholar [...] discussing challenging topics that escape traditional frames of literary studies: vocal transmissions of Petrarch’s verse, Camillo’s theater of memory, and Berni’s Rifacimento of Boiardo’s Innamorato between oral and written language... These eminent scholars and their fifteen fellow authors form a remarkable group shot of different generations of Italianists between two continents.’ — Alessandro Giammei, Renaissance Quarterly 71.9, October 2018, 1196-98
  • ‘This broad and enterprising survey is provided by some of the foremost names in early modern Italian Studies... Though the volume is ambitious and highly diverse, editors Stefano Jossa and Giuliana Pieri have ensured a smooth transition of thought between the essays, and the structure of the book itself is instinctive and accessible... A substantial contribution to early modern Italian Studies, and scholars from a range of disciplines will find it a valuable and thought-provoking read.’ — Lucy Rayfield, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 150-51 (full text online)

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

Cultural Reception, Translation and Transformation from Medieval to Modern Italy: Essays in Honour of Martin McLaughlin
Edited by Guido Bonsaver, Brian Richardson, and Giuseppe Stellardi
Legenda (General Series) •17 May 2017

  • ‘A remarkable unified collection... [the essays] may be read in any order, so rich and abundant are the resonances among them.’ — Carmine G. Di Biase, Times Literary Supplement 8 May 2018
  • ‘Zygmunt G. Barański presents a deeply contextualized understanding of the Orpheus myth in Petrarch’s Canzoniere, taking into account Virgilian and Ovidian antecedents, and the traces of their elaboration in works including the Bucolicum carmen and Familiares. At the heart of his essay, Barański boldly, but not unpersuasively, asserts Petrarch’s lyric collection of fragments to be “the great overlooked Orphic text of the Western tradition”. Brian Richardson’s essay is also among the most ambitious, tackling a massive quantity of Renaissance Italian poetic production—extempore Latin and vernacular lyric compositions—and he does so with aplomb, providing perhaps the first categorization with a qualitative/theoretical valuation of this important but almost entirely overlooked subgenre of poetry... Meriting special distinction, Peter Hainsworth’s contribution rescues John Dickson Batten’s illustrations to Dante’s Inferno (1897–1900) from their relative oblivion.’ — Sherry Roush, Renaissance Quarterly 71.9, October 2018, 1193-95
  • ‘The scope, historical locus and chronological ambition of the present volume are exceptionally wide and rich... The quality of the contributions is invariably high and all are case-studies relevant to the book’s central preoccupation with cultural contact and interchange... an admirable collection, full of stimulus and surprises, handsomely produced by Legenda.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, July 2019, 265-66 (full text online)
  • ‘This volume brings to mind one of Calvino’s own definitions, in his Why Read The Classics?: ‘The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the language and customs) through which they have passed’ (McLaughlin’s translation). The volume invites readers into the palimpsest that is Italian culture, which is to say, among other things, its imitations, its intertextuality and transmediality, and its translations.’ — Antonella Braida, Translation and Literature 29, 2020, 291-96 (full text online)
  • ‘The volume reads as a user guide to the most updated views on literary theory and cultural studies, demonstrating how ‘open’ a field Italian studies has become in recent years. Texts—in a semiological sense, hence comprising all meaningful artefacts of culture—are scrutinized through a wide range of approaches, including linguistic, philological, thematic, intertextual, historical, sociological, comparative. and hermeneutical.’ — Oscar Schiavone, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 737-41 (full text online)

The Epic Rhetoric of Tasso: Theory and Practice
Maggie Günsberg
Legenda (General Series) •1 May 1998

  • ‘Günsberg examines her material with great accuracy... deals with important aspects of Tasso's thought and poetical practice in a meticulous way, and can be useful both for readers attached to traditional rhetorical categories and for those with an interest in more recent critical developments.’ — Laura Benedetti, Italian Studies LIV, 1999, 177-8
  • ‘An attractive and interesting volume that provides a useful addition to the comparatively thin recent output of Tasso scholarship in this country.’ — Peter Brand, Modern Language Review 95.3, 2000, 857-8 (full text online)

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

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

Isabella Sori, Ammaestramenti e ricordi
Edited by Helena Sanson
Critical Texts 48•31 October 2018

The Italian Academies 1525-1700: Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent
Edited by Jane E. Everson, Denis V. Reidy and Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 31•1 September 2016

  • ‘With new archival research, new areas of study, and an innovative approach, Italian Academies challenges preconceived ideas about academies and successfully demonstrates the fundamental role played by these associations in disseminating ideas, culture, innovation, and dissent in the early modern period.’ — Patrizia Bettella, Quaderni d'Italianistica 39.1, 2017, 265-68

The Italian Renaissance: A Zest for Life
Edited by Michel Jeanneret and Nicolas Ducimetière
Legenda (General Series) •15 May 2017

  • ‘This is a Renaissance that triumphantly emerges from the dark ages of medieval Europe, bringing with it the birth of an ideal society guided by beauty and love, thus giving rise to one of the most extraordinary creative seasons of poetry, architecture, and art that the world has ever known... Yves Bonnefoy gives a moving account of his youthful discovery, in a still deserted post-war Florence, of the Brancacci Chapel... The most remarkable pages, however, of these many and memorable contributions are those by Michel Butor, sadly deceased in the same year in which the book was published. Always concerned with ‘micro-événements’ [...] Butor simply fixes his (and our) attention on every tiny detail of Antonello da Messina’s Renaissance image of the Middle Ages in his painting of Saint Jerome in his Study, reading (one presumes) his own historic translation of the Bible. The sense of this descriptive tour de force becomes clear in a final poem in which Butor identifies himself with Antonello.’ — Hilary Gatti, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 887-89 (full text online)

Language and Style in a Renaissance Epic: Berni's Corrections to Boiardo's 'Orlando Innamorato'
H. F. Woodhouse
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 17•1 January 1982

Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della instituzion delle donne secondo li tre stati che cadono nella vita umana (1545)
Edited by Helena Sanson
Critical Texts 30•1 June 2015

Luigi Tansillo and Lyric Poetry in Sixteenth-Century Naples
Erika Milburn
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 57•1 January 2003

Pastoral Drama in Early Modern Italy: The Making of a New Genre
Lisa Sampson
Italian Perspectives 15•5 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

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

Pietro Bembo: A Life in Laurels and Scarlet
Marco Faini
Legenda (General Series) •15 May 2017

  • ‘Faini has managed very effectively the task of providing an introduction to Bembo’s life and work that is insightful yet relatively succinct and accessible. He gives a good sense of the complexity of underlying issues without overwhelming readers with detail. His writing is engaging and attentive to descriptive effect... Helpfully and attractively illustrated.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 884-86 (full text online)
  • ‘As this slim but elegant volume highlights, the life of Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) bridges the transition in Italy from the height of the Renaissance into the early stages of the Catholic Reformation, not simply in terms of chronology but also in his career trajectory... This is a beautifully illustrated work, with more than 30 images, many of which are in colour. It is an engaging treatment and an excellent introduction to this significant figure.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.2, July 2019, 266 (full text online)
  • ‘La rédaction de cette biographie a été confiée à un jeune et brillant chercheur, Fellow de la Villa I Tatti, un des meilleurs connaisseurs du personnage. Marco Faini s'est acquitté de cette tâche difficile avec une réelle finesse littéraire.’ — Jean Balsamo, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 79.1, 2017, 262-65

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

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

The Reinvention of Theatre in Sixteenth-Century Europe: Traditions, Texts and Performance
Edited by T. F. Earle and Catarina Fouto
Legenda (General Series) •8 June 2015

  • ‘Sem dúvida, uma perspectiva rica e bastante abrangente do fenómeno teatral na Europa do séc. XVI.’ — Manuel José De Sousa Barbosa, Euphrosyne 45, 2017, 658-60

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

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

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

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