Journeys of Remembrance: Memories of the Second World War in French and German Literature, 1960-1980
Kathryn N. Jones
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2007
- ‘A fascinating and well-structured approach to a complex subject, and its transnational focus not only provides an original insight into a range of European writers, but also shows how profitable it is to go beyond the more usual national studies of memory and war.’ — Hilary Footitt, Modern Language Review 103.3, July 2008, 817-17 (full text online)
- ‘The study is about memories and impressions of the later years' holocaust... The striking photograph shows us an empty world with a bleak railway line and its sidetracks, making their way into the fearful forested world that was Auschwitz, practically a symbol of the Final Solution. And with this in mind, Kathryn Jones's study is a success.’ — John Dunmore, New Zealand Journal of French Studies 29.2, 2008, 65-66
- ‘Jones departs unequivocally from Adorno's dictat on the incompatibility of art and atrocity and, through her deft presentation of a succession of more or less metaphorical journeys, she makes a good case. This valuable book for all scholars of post-war French and Ger man culture will enhance the reader’s understanding of what Paul Ricoeur once termed 'l'événement fondateur négatif' of the last century.’ — David Platten, French Studies 63.3 (2009), 370-71
- ‘An ambitious study that succeeds in bearing out its claims about diverse yet contemporaneous literary responses to WWII. Journeys of Remembrance is a valuable introduction to a body of post-WWII French and German writing concerned with the intergenerational transmission of memory and the relation between personal identity and cultural legacy.’ — Susan Derwin, Monatshefte 102.1, 2010, 118-20
- ‘An illuminating comparative analysis... Offers much to consider concerning the development and transmission of memory, generational continuity and rupture, and fictional representation in Holocaust literature.’ — Homer B. Sutton, French Review 82.5, April 2009, 1066-67
Labours of Attention: Work, Class and Society in French and Francophone Literature and Culture
Adam Watt
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2022
Language and Social Structure in Urban France
Edited by Mari C. Jones and David Hornsby
Legenda (General Series) •4 December 2013
- ‘From a variationist’s perspective, this is an insightful volume, methodical in its approach to the subject matter, and careful to consider existing research from across the social sciences. Its overarching aims are very well addressed, and the proposals outlined by the contributors will undoubtedly form an important part of future research on Metropolitan French. The volume’s undoubted strength and significant contribution comes from the break in the ‘reciprocal ignorance pact’ (Fishman 1991) that characterises the relationship between sociology and sociolinguistics. As Pooley rightly suggests (p. 209), it is this break in tradition that must now spearhead new avenues of research.’ — Jonathan R. Kasstan, Journal of French Language Studies 26.2, July 2016, 209-11
Language, the Novelist and National Identity in Post-Franco Catalonia
Kathryn Crameri
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2000
- Modern Language Review 97.3, 2002, 741-42) (full text online)
- ‘The global rebirth of nationality studies in the humanities, now well into its second decade, has largely coincided with attempts in Catalonia to flesh out the decentralizing provisions of Spain's 1978 Constitution... Crameri provides us with a valuable new tool for enhancing our understanding of these important and ongoing processes.’ — Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXX, 2003, 385-7)
Liberty, Equality, Maternity
Alison Fell
Legenda (General Series) •1 June 2003
- ‘A highly readable, well-informed, and clearly argued study of the discourses of motherhood in twentieth-century France.’ — Catherine Rodgers, Modern Language Review 99.4, 2004, 1059-60 (full text online)
- ‘Ce livre consciencieux met en valeur l'humanité des trois écrivaines étudiées plutôt qu'une quelconque rigidité. Somme tout, c'est leur histoire personnelle que Fell explore, avec tout ce que cela supposes de contradictions, d'ambiguïtés, de tiraillements entre théorie et vécu.’ — Catherine Slawy-Sutton, French Review 79.2, 2006, 420-21
Lucidity: Essays in Honour of Alison Finch
Edited by Ian James and Emma Wilson
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘This carefully crafted volume offers subtle and sustained reflections on the theme of lucidity as it is manifested in a range of cultural forms and media... This volume of fine schol- arship is dedicated to Alison Finch. As such, it pays tribute to her writing, teaching, and personal qualities, and constitutes a fitting tribute to her own lucidity.’ — Shirley Jordan, French Studies 74.1, January 2020, 157 (full text online)
The Made and the Found: Essays, Prose and Poetry in Honour of Michael Sheringham
Edited by Patrick McGuinness and Emily McLaughlin
Legenda (General Series) •25 May 2017
- ‘Micky’s words return here in all their felicity. His appetite, brilliance, and distinct sensibility are intensely present. The editors speak of Micky ‘drawn by what was accidental, unsystematic, eccentric’ (p. ix). They see him glorying in ‘the overspill of things’. They speak of Micky as their ‘friend and colleague’ and this book is a beautiful act of camaraderie.’ — Emma Wilson, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 485-86 (full text online)
- ‘This starry roster of writers, working in English and French, often operate along lines of creative interplay between chance and choice, the map and serendipity, walking and writing, celebrating the transition from noticing to noting and from there maybe even into actually making poetry.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 375
- ‘The Made and the Found is a rich volume that will be of interest to friends of the late Michael Sheringham as well as to all those wanting to study the relation between French culture, language and the everyday.’ — Verena Andermatt Conley, H-France 18.214, November 2018
Making the Personal Political: Dutch Women Writers 1919-1970
Jane Fenoulhet
Legenda (General Series) •14 December 2007
- ‘Fenoulhet's project is exciting and original. It is a well-researched and informative account of how women writers in the Netherlands shaped the self at a time when self-realization was a male prerogative. And it makes you want to reread Carry van Bruggen, and that is surely a good thing.’ — Henriëtte Louwerse, Modern Language Review 104.3, 2009, 929-31 (full text online)
- ‘Eight excellent case studies... that explore how through their work individual writers reflect upon and challenge the role of women in society.’ — The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 69, 2007, 853)
Michel Foucault: Form and Power
Dan Beer
Legenda (General Series) •1 May 2002
- ‘Beer's book is a dialogue with Foucault, including critiques of his arguments by Baudrillard and Derrida. It has been suggested that the seductive beauty of Foucault's language masks the frailty of some of his positions, and Beer provides close analysis of the stylistic strategies he deploys.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XXXIX, 2003, 465-6
- ‘After Beer we can return to Foucault's texts with a new imagination and a new sensitivity to the force of his style.’ — Jeremy Carrette, Modern Language Review 99.2, 2004, 502-3 (full text online)
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe: (Un)timely Meditations
John McKeane
Legenda (General Series) •10 December 2014
- ‘This study is a comprehensive and clearly written introduction to Lacoue-Labarthe’s thought and writing.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.3, July 2015
- ‘With an irresistible combination of patience, precision, lucidity, and forceful intellectual engagement, McKeane gives us Lacoue-Labarthe in all his compelling dispersion... This is an excellent and enlightening book, and highly recommended.’ — Martin Crowley, French Studies 70.1, January 2016, 130
- ‘McKeane contests such an approach [regarding PL-L as purely a philosopher], insisting on the importance of keeping ‘art, literature and the stage’ in view in discussing Lacoue-Labarthe. One of the virtues of McKeane’s study is that, while it rejects the notion of any eclecticism on the part of Lacoue-Labarthe, it draws judiciously on a wide range of texts, yet manages to present a cohesive sense of this unique writer and thinker. It is fascinating as well to see McKeane refer to his own unpublished interviews and correspondance with Nancy.’ — Jeff Fort, Modern Language Review 111.2, April 2016, 555-57 (full text online)
Photobiography: Photographic Self-Writing in Proust, Guibert, Ernaux, Macé
Akane Kawakami
Legenda (General Series) •4 December 2013
- ‘An important addition to literature on the subject. Kawakami’s conclusion is that we are entering a new age of writing about ourselves photographically. Researchers exploring the self-perceptions that are made available in the lens-inflected self-narratives of this new age will surely gain from setting their findings into context by reading this extremely rewarding study.’ — Shirley Jordan, French Studies 68.4, October 2014, 580-81
- ‘All in all, this study brings a new perspective to bear on the study of autobiography that is in keeping with the times both thematically and theoretically. The photobio- graphical text reveals dimensions of personal experience that engage both text and image, reality and fantasy, writer and reader.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 508
- ‘This volume provides a readable introduction to photobiography and faithful syntheses of the texts. With its wealth of bilingual quotation, its consistent clarity, and a particularly strong chapter on Ernaux, Kawakami has fashioned a volume that could also work extremely well as a course book.’ — Paul Edwards, Screen 79, Summer 2014, 65-66
- ‘Among the strengths of Photobiography, I would point to her use of the first person in her own prose, her very complete use of relevant criticism, and her mastery of works of differing if overlapping genres.’ — Ralph Sarkonak, Modern Language Review 110.2, April 2015, 550-51 (full text online)
- ‘Kawakami’s lively new study of a particular brand of contemporary photo-textual practice signals a photographic turn in narratives of the self... Kawakami compellingly considers how Guibert, Ernaux, and Macé use photography to complicate the already ambiguous generic status of their texts, which hover on the border between document and fiction.’ — Ari J. Blatt, French Review 89.1, 2015, 228
The Picture as Spectre in Diderot, Proust, and Deleuze
Thomas Baldwin
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2011
- ‘Current critical debates on both spectrality and ekphrastic poetics are greatly enriched by Thomas Baldwin’s tightly woven and theoretically intricate study.’ — Margaret Topping, French Studies 67.1 (January 2013), 125
Pierre Klossowski: The Persistence of a Name
Ian James
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2000
- ‘Klossowski is presented here as a key contributor to post-modern thought and aesthetics.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies xxxix/1, 2003, 106
- Antonella Arrigoni, Studi francesi XLVI, 2002, 2
- ‘The appearance of the first monograph in English on Klossowski is welcome, all the more so as James's study provides such a scrupulous and thoughtful account of Klossowski's diverse output, its intellectual inheritance and its contemporary resonances.’ — Ian Maclachlan, French Studies LVII.2, 2003, 270-1
Pinter and the Object of Desire: An Approach through the Screenplays
Linda Renton
Legenda (General Series) •1 May 2002
- ‘Linda Renton's superb study of Pinter as screenwriter quotes him saying how natural the process seemed when he started to write for films in the early 1960s... A strong commitment to the power of the image runs through his screen work, however paradoxical this might seem in a writer famed for his sparring dialogue. Renton argues that the image was central to his approach to film, suggesting that there is an "an object of desire" at the heart of all Pinter's screenplays: one which is often barely visible - or even invisible - to the characters in the story.’ — Ian Christie, Sight & Sound June 2009, 33
Poetry and the Leningrad Religious-Philosophical Seminar 1974-1980: Music for a Deaf Age
Josephine von Zitzewitz
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘Von Zitzewitz convincingly demonstrates that the religious-philosophical impulse in general, and a pull to Russian Orthodoxy in particular, was a widespread cultural phenomenon in the late Soviet period, cutting across the official/unofficial divide... von Zitzewitz’s precise situating of her subjects in their unofficial environment constitutes a crucial key to understanding the semantic and formal features of their work, and in turn, the lonely and frustrated spirit of their time.’ — Ainsley Morse, Modern Language Review 112.4, 2017, 1053-55 (full text online)
- ‘In her impeccably researched and documented book, Josephine von Zitzewitz combines an examination of the Religious-Philosophical Seminar with five case studies of poets from the Leningrad underground of the 1970s and 80s... An important contribution to the study of both late-Soviet poetry and religious literary culture.’ — Sarah Clovis Bishop, Slavic and East European Journal 61.4, Winter 2017, 913-14
Poetry and the Realm of the Public Intellectual: The Alternative Destinies of Gabriela Mistral, Cecília Meireles, and Rosario Castellanos
Karen Peña
Legenda (General Series) •14 December 2007
- ‘By bringing together three of the principal Latin-American authors of the twentieth century, Poetry and the Realm of the Public Intellectual contributes enormously to our understanding of what inspired and motivated them as authors. Peña proves to have a very thorough understanding of poetry, providing a painstakingly close readings of the three poets analysed. She also demonstrates a great deal of familiarity with both Spanish and Portuguese bibliographical sources in her studies of each of the writers... A valuable contribution to the field of Latin-American poetry, especially in its discussion of the question of gender and the place of female intellectuals in Latin America.’ — Vivaldo Santos, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 87.7, 2010, 1020-21
- ‘Resumiendo, se trata de una contribución valiosa e importante sobre la conflictividad americana mediada por las voces femeninas. Por encima de todo, Peña nos muestra que la poesía es más vital y resonante en sus momentos de rebeldía.’ — Roland Spiller, Iberoamericana 43, 2011, 200-01
Post-War Jewish Women’s Writing in French
Lucille Cairns
Legenda (General Series) •25 March 2011
Postcolonial Fiction and Sacred Scripture: Rewriting the Divine?
Sura Qadiri
Legenda (General Series) •1 July 2014
- ‘This is an important intervention into discussions of the relationship between literary discourses and sacred scripture. Focusing primarily on recent francophone North African novels, Sura Qadiri examines the positions that literary works take with respect to sacred texts, from latent and inadvertent engagements with the divine, to outright assertions of distinction, in which literary forms are construed as anti-doctrinal and subversive of religious orthodoxies.’ — Neil Doshi, French Studies 69.4, October 2015, 566-67
The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli
Edited by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati
Legenda (General Series) •17 July 2009
- ‘The chapters avail themselves of the entire arc of twentieth-century theories and models of subjectivity and sexuality, to try to unravel Manuele's search for freedom from his all-consuming passion for his mother Aracoeli, and include Freud, Jung, Klein, Bowlby, Stern, Sander, Winnicott, Laplanche and Pontalis, Kristeva, Lacan, Cavarero, Muraro, Silverman, (Jessica) Benjamin, and Butler. These theories serve the novel very well, illuminating the many strands and aspects of Manuele's 'condition' and of the novel... An invaluable teaching tool and thus an incentive to include Aracoeli in advanced university courses in Italian and European literature.’ — Adalgisa Giorgio, Italian Studies 66.1, March 2011, 144-46
Questions of the Liminal in the Fiction of Julio Cortázar
Dominic Moran
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2000
- ‘An ambitious attempt to improve the level of sophistication of Cortázar criticism and, at the same time, to nudge the existing consensus about the meaning of Cortázar's work in a specific direction... What is important is not that Moran shows us yet again that Cortázar's fiction emphasizes the ambiguity and mystery surrounding reality and the human psyche. It is that he offers a way to put that ambiguity and mystery into the context of some modern thinking.’ — Donald L. Shaw, Bulletin of Spanish Studies LXXIX, 2002, 670-1
Re-Contextualising East Central European History: Nation, Culture and Minority Groups
Edited by Robert Pyrah and Marius Turda
Legenda (General Series) •6 September 2010
- ‘The essays in this collection are original and promise much for the future of scholarship on the region... Important matters are at stake here, including the professional historian’s relationship with the public and the memory industry (booming in East Central Europe), and the extent to which national narratives of heroism and victimhood obscure both the complexity of the past and the histories of minorities and non-national groups.’ — John Paul Newman, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 261-63 (full text online)
- ‘A snapshot of the research interests of scholars who are producing genuinely innovative research on topics which have been largely overlooked in the existing English language scholarship... also contains an extensive selected bibliography of the key recent publications on the region that should be an invaluable resource.’ — Thomas A. Lorman, Central Europe 10.1, May 2012, 80-82
- ‘The essays in this volume demonstrate the growing range and sophistication of Anglophone scholarship on East Central Europe, particularly in their presentation of minority experiences, based on rigorous research in multiple, often lesser-known languages.’ — Nathaniel D. Wood, Austrian History Yearbook 43, 2012, 200-01
Reading Games in the Greek Novel
Eleni Papargyriou
Legenda (General Series) •25 March 2011
Regarding Lost Time: Photography, Identity, and Affect in Proust, Benjamin, and Barthes
Katja Haustein
Legenda (General Series) •30 January 2012
- ‘Katja Haustein’s monograph charts new territory in the expanding study of autobiographical writing in the light of photography... this volume will no doubt be of great benefit to specialists of these three seminal authors, as well as to those working in comparative studies.’ — Kathrin Yacavone, French Studies 67.2 (April 2013), 271-72
- ‘Katja Haustein undertakes a titanic task: to bring together three bulwarks of twentieth-century intellect, each one so seminal in their own right that even the thought of combining them in one study would seem quixotic. Haustein not only accomplishes the task, but manages to bring out a genuinely comparative account... it is a very useful book to have read, and one which, I am certain, I will return to again and again.’ — Eleni Papargyriou, Comparative Critical Studies 10, 2013, 407-09
- ‘This book contains several beautiful, thoughtfully chosen illustrations, and is a useful source of information about scholarship in German on Proust... a significant and stimulating contribution to the scholarship on these three important writers.’ — Áine Larkin, Modern Language Review 110.1, January 2015, 228-29 (full text online)
Reinventing Community: Identity and Difference in Late Twentieth-Century Philosophy and Literature in French
Jane Hiddleston
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2005
- ‘This is a lucid, cogently-argued work that is both extensive and focused. As such it represents an important contribution to the urgent discussion of community and the fraught relationship between "singular-plural" beings and the collectivities they form.’ — Nicole Simek, French Review 80.3, 2007, 670-71
Roger Laporte: The Orphic Text
Ian Maclachlan
Legenda (General Series) •1 November 2000
- ‘Maclachlan admirably pulls off the difficult task of maintaining a just tension between the demands of critical exegesis and the demands of the work itself... succeeds in opening a space for their reading and indicating the importance of this reading.’ — Patrick ffrench, French Studies LVI.3, 2002, 432-3
- Elisa Bricco, Studi francesi XLVI, 2002, 2