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French Divorce Fiction from the Revolution to the First World War
Nicholas White
Legenda (General Series) •23 February 2013

  • ‘Impeccably researched and well-written... Developing White's earlier survey of the family novel (1999), grounded in historical knowledge, guided by sociological readings, and underpinned by a massive amount of reading from the past two centuries, this ambitious study concludes with a meditation on contemporary images of relationships, in ways that hint at a welcome third volume of the triptych.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, Times Literary Supplement 27 September 2013
  • ‘Fortunately for nineteenth-century French readers, the advent of divorce did not signal an untimely end to the marriage of familial and plot structures... And just as fortunately for contemporary readers, Nicholas White has provided the first study of these distinctively modern tales, deftly weaving long-forgotten divorce novels, many of them quite popular in their time, into a complex and insightful broader sociocultural but also deeply literary and historical narrative.’ — Rachel Mesch, Romanic Review 2014, 104.1-2, 172-74
  • ‘A persuasive study of a society, and its literature, exploring the implications of new ideas of personal freedom.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.2, April 2014, 232
  • ‘The originality of this important study is clear: it is the first book in English or French to focus on the divorce fiction that surrounds the Loi Naquet. The monograph’s ambitious breadth is reflected in the range of authors discussed: in addition to references to canonical figures such as Maupassant and Bourget, renewed consideration is afforded to the ‘Great Unread’, or what is termed ‘“minor” women writers and unfashionable patriarchs’ (p. 145), including André Léo, Claire Vautier, Marie-Anne de Bovet, and Camille Pert, and Anatole France, Alphonse Daudet, and Edouard Rod.’ — Steven Wilson, French Studies 68.2, April 2014, 257
  • ‘Nicholas White has considered a series of important questions about nineteenth- and twentieth-century French novels... His work opens the way for interested readers in fields as various as history, literature, sociology and gender studies to ask and answer new questions of their own about these novels now.’ — Jean Elisabeth Pedersen, French History 28.2, June 2014, 277-78
  • ‘An important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century French literature and the family. The authors covered are an exciting selection of, as White puts it, ‘unknown women and forgotten men’. He displays tremendous knowledge of the corpus and authors, but also of the eras and literary movements discussed. His inspired choice to conclude with American novelist Diane Johnson’s 1997 Le Divorce brings his story to the present, but also contributes to his broader argument about the literary value of texts beyond the canon.’ — Phoebe Maltz Bovy, Modern Language Review 109.4, October 2014, 1086-87 (full text online)
  • ‘Témoignant d’une profonde érudition, apportant une grande attention aux contextes idéologiques et biographiques, cet essai sans équivalent, aux analyses perspicaces, aux enjeux précis, à l’écriture claire et non départie d’humour, offre une lecture aussi enrichissante qu’agréable.’ — Claudie Bernard, French Review 89.1, 2015, 288

From Art Nouveau to Surrealism: Belgian Modernity in the Making
Edited by Nathalie Aubert, Pierre-Philippe Fraiture and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) •5 July 2007

  • ‘Discerning insights typify this volume, that sensitively examines sixty years of visual, literary, musical, and political avant-garde expression.’ — Silvano Levy, Modern Language Review 103.4, October 2008, 1130-31 (full text online)
  • ‘A welcome and wide-ranging picture of Belgian Modernity up to the Second World War.’ — Lénia Marques, Journal of Romance Studies 8.3, Winter 2008, 77-87
  • ‘This collection of fifteen essays is the first in English to present a wide-ranging overview of Belgian modernity between 1880 and 1950. The result is a richly detailed assessment of specifically Belgian cultural production and of its European context, divided into two sections, the first spanning 1880-1918, and the second the inter-war years... an invaluable study of a period whose cultural production the editors describe as "awkward and intractable, but also enriching and full of unexpected possibilities".’ — unsigned, Forum for Modern Language Studies 46.1, January 2010, 113

Gravity and Grace: Essays for Roger Pearson
Edited by Charlie Louth and Patrick McGuinness
Legenda (General Series) •25 February 2019

  • ‘A core series of contributions offers a remarkably sustained and rich reflection on the interplay between the aesthetic and ethical notions of gravity and grace.’ — Scott M. Powers, H-France 20, June 2020, no. 92
  • ‘Works of art function by allowing something to happen, rather than by making something happen, and are nothing without our active participation. The prescriptive weightiness of words in practical discourse is not what poetry, especially, puts in play. That certainly makes this book a fitting tribute to the wonderful work of Roger Pearson, whose own writing is never heavy, never pedantic, but always invites and inspires the reader to continue thinking beyond the page.’ — Peter Dayan, Modern Language Review 116.1, 2020, 188-89 (full text online)

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

In(ter)discipline: New Languages for Criticism
Edited by Gillian Beer, Malcolm Bowie and Beate Perrey
Legenda (General Series) •14 December 2007

  • ‘Emerging from conferences organized between 2002 and 2006 within a research project New Languages for Criticism: Cross Currents and Resistances, this compendium addresses the question of the search within the modern humanities for new languages for criticism in the light of a broadening awareness of the increasingly interdisciplinary or intermedial nature of cultural production and research.’ — David Scott, French Studies 514-15
  • ‘The ambition, expertise and disciplinary breadth of this collection are exhilarating... Malcolm Bowie’s celebration of the ‘wonderfully impure acts of translation, of provocation, of risk-taking, and of abyssmanship that musical experience involves’ (p. 72) might equally describe this collection of essays. Often lyrical and innovative in their critical style, these essays by distinguished contributors... are also an important contribution to the definition and exploration of interdisciplinarity itself.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.1, 2012, 112

Inheritance in Nineteenth-Century French Culture: Wealth, Knowledge and the Family
Andrew J. Counter
Legenda (General Series) •12 April 2010

  • ‘That the [19th] century felt disinherited is a truism. Andrew Counter's absorbing book makes clear the extent to which the inheritance laws of the Revolution, and more particularly of the Code Civil of 1804, were themselves at the core of this new cultural moment... A pleasantly written, exhaustively researched and resourcefully argued book.’ — Ross Chambers, French Forum 36.1, 2011, 140-42
  • ‘This important work charts new critical terrain... a work of fastidious scholarship, written with brio, and captivating for the reader.’ — Claire White, French Studies 65.4, 2011, 543-44
  • ‘Counter is careful to avoid unnecessary jargon; his prose is clear and the humorous asides that pepper the study, far from detracting from the argument, make this a very enjoyable read. This is a thorough, thoughtful study which elegantly weaves together literary, political, and legal discourses and in doing so sheds new light on a hitherto little-explored but extremely rich topic. At every turn, the author carefully eschews the obvious, instead choosing the path less travelled... This subtle and intelligent study succeeds in redefining our understanding of family and inheritance in the nineteenth century, and the importance of this seminal monograph should resonate widely within and beyond French Studies.’ — Floriane Place-Verghnes, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 286-87 (full text online)
  • ‘There is enough background information in this well-conceived and clearly-written study to make the analyses accessible to those unfamiliar with the works discussed, and enough original interpretation and careful referencing to make it an enjoyable and engaging read for both cultural historians and literary scholars.’ — Laurey Martin-Berg, French Review 85.3, 2012, 547-48
  • ‘Impressive in its careful historical approach, the range of material it engages, and its perceptive readings on themes of testaments, greed, crime, family, and women’s renunciation of property... Counter’s interdisciplinary book illustrates that society cannot be understood through any single model of the family or type of 'family knowledge'.’ — Sarah Bernthal, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 42.3-4, Summer 2014

The Inn and the Traveller: Digressive Topographies in the Early Modern European Novel
Will McMorran
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2002

  • ‘The book could serve, almost by the way, as a brief introduction to the modes of early narrative fiction in any of the European languages on which it draws.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 112
  • ‘McMorran's approach offers a number of intriguing comparisons among a set of novels not itherto considered together in a single study. It places Fielding and Sterne within a broader European context, which so many Anglocentric treatments fail to do. Most important, it usefully interrogates the ways that travel within a text reflects, influences, and subverts travel through a text.’ — Joseph F. Bartolomeo, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 17:2, 2005, 288-90
  • ‘A highly accomplished comparatist, McMorran respects the specificities of the national traditions to which the works he discusses belong while teasing out the overarching European narrative on which his interpretation depends.’ — Charles Forsdick, Modern Language Review 102.1, January 2007, 187-88 (full text online)

Intimacy and Distance: Conflicting Cultures in Nineteenth-Century France
Philippa Lewis
Legenda (General Series) •29 September 2017

  • ‘L’ouvrage ne se contente pas d’explorer les productions littéraires de l’intime (du roman intime au récit de voyage) mais s’appuie sur une belle et riche variété de formes littéraires et culturelles (journaux intimes, portraits littéraires, critique d’art) pour mettre en évidence la hiérarchie des valeurs à l’œuvre dans la notion d’intime.’ — Françoise Grauby, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 459
  • ‘Philippa Lewis’s fresh, thoughtful overview of the virtual relationships between French authors and readers between 1830 and 1870 focuses on selected works by Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire, Gustave Flaubert, Eugène Fromentin, Maurice de Guérin, and C.-A. Sainte-Beuve... She effectively synthesizes the deconstructive distinguo move of deconstruction—dissecting specious identities—with a discreet historical consciousness that alternatively discloses new ranges of possibilities and then contracts into a synthesis. Brief, thoughtful footnotes extend Lewis’s discussions in many directions, revealing her exemplary deep background.’ — Laurence M. Porter, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 47.1-2, Fall 2018
  • ‘In this thoughtful and suggestive monograph, Philippa Lewis offers a carefully historicized, thoroughly researched, and beautifully written account of the place occupied by the concept of intimacy in the literary culture of nineteenth-century France, and especially its middle decades... The book’s true point, and its greatest merit, is to get under the skin—intus, et in cute—of nineteenth-century French letters; to reanimate with a careful balance of sympathy and erudition a somewhat forgotten yet profoundly influential moment in the history of literary thought. In this respect, the book will be of compelling interest to all scholars of nineteenth-century France.’ — Andrew J. Counter, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 146-47 (full text online)
  • ‘Accompagnato da una bibliogra a veramente ricca e da un dettagliato indice dei nomi, il saggio di Philippa Lewis si occupa nella prima parte dell’Intimacy, prendendo come punto di partenza un saggio di Henry James su Sainte-Beuve, in cui l’autore mostra il carattere “intimo” della scrittura come una caratteristica di una importante zona della letteratura francese del xix secolo: «poésie intime, the roman intime, and the journal intime».’ — Maria Emanuela Raffi, Studi francesi 186, 20, 2019, 516-17
  • ‘Lewis’s convincing argument revolves around the idea that male authors writing after 1830, including both well- and lesser-known writers such as Flaubert, Euge`ne Fromentin, and above all Baudelaire, employed certain textual strategies as a result of their ambivalent feelings towards intimacy... This study constitutes a very significant addition to the existing corpus of works on the cultural and literary history of intimacy.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.1, January 2019, 119
  • ‘A very well-researched and engaging contribution to the literary history of nineteenth-century France, the social and cultural history of emotions, Baudelaire studies, and historical masculinity studies. By deprivileging distance as the primary spatial and affective metaphor for understanding post-revolutionary French society and restoring intimacy to its rightful place on the cultural and literary landscape, Lewis successfully complicates one of the foundational paradigms of nineteenth-century French studies, making her book a compelling read for all scholars in the field.’ — Jessica Tanner, H-France 19, February 2019, no. 27
  • ‘This book is written with admirable clarity and, via the lens of intimacy, offers original perspectives on some well-known and lesser-known writers, while also shedding light on the emotional history of the nineteenth century.’ — Paul Gibbard, Emotions: History, Culture, Society 3, 2019, 174-75

Jacques Derrida and the Institution of French Philosophy
Vivienne Orchard
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2011

  • ‘Orchard’s careful attention to significant details promises to refresh thinking in an important area of theory and philosophy.’ — Sarah Wood, French Studies 66.4 (October 2012), 581

Jorge Semprún: Writing the European Other
Ursula Tidd
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2014

The Journalist in the French Fin-de-siècle Novel: Enfants de la presse
Kate Rees
Legenda (General Series) •26 February 2018

  • ‘L’ouvrage de Rees est donc intéressant et riche, on ne peut qu’en recommander la lecture. Il constitue une excellente synthèse de la recherche en direction du public anglophone, tout en apportant son propre regard sur les représentations du journalisme.’ — Guillaume Pinson, French Studies 73.2, April 2019, 312 (full text online)
  • ‘An excellent new analysis of the figure of the journalist in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French fiction. It will be a significant guide for future studies of the French press and the French journalist, and it serves as a reminder of the historical importance of journalists and the press, especially in today’s world of “fake news” campaigns and anti- media attacks that aim to silence the essential role of journalists in our society.’ — Juliette M. Rogers, H-France 19.70, May 2019
  • ‘Kate Rees’s fine new monograph takes us into a world both strange and familiar: magazine and newspaper publishing in the Belle Époque... Rees produces rich and detailed readings of all the texts she considers, unfolding their complexities with great subtlety while drawing in ideas from fields as diverse as phenomenology and remediation theory. A substantial and significant research content has been orchestrated with a sure touch, resulting in a monograph which will be of interest not only to dix-neuviémistes but to anyone concerned with the relationship between literature and journalism, and the latter’s role in shaping modern culture.’ — Emma Bielecki, Modern Language Review 115.3, July 2020, 729-30 (full text online)

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

Last Scene of All: Representing Death on the Western Stage
Edited by Jessica Goodman
Legenda (General Series) •13 September 2022

The Libertine’s Nemesis: The Prude in Clarissa and the roman libertin
James Fowler
Legenda (General Series) •4 February 2011

  • ‘The beguiling cover of this Legenda volume is well matched by the book’s contents. Fowler’s thesis is an original and well-argued one: the establishment of a symbiotic relationship between the libertine and the prude in a number of key eighteenth-century texts... the argument is persuasive and elegant, and we are swept along by the author’s enthusiasm for his subject.’ — John Phillips, French Studies 66.3, July 2012, 402

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

Mallarmé's Sunset: Poetry at the End of Time
Barnaby Norman
Legenda (General Series) •1 November 2014

  • ‘This study argues that Mallarmé’s poetry takes up a problem first posed by Hegel’s Aesthetics, namely that art’s self-transcendence can never be complete. Norman offers close readings of four works by Mallarmé (‘Hérodiade’, ‘Sonnet allégorique de luimême’, ‘Igitur’ and ‘Un coup de dés’) while demonstrating Mallarmé’s relevance to problems at the intersection of literature and critical theory which play a central role in the writings of Maurice Blanchot and the early Jacques Derrida, each of whom is the subject of a chapter in the second half of the book.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 51.3, July 2015
  • ‘Mallarmé’s Sunsets reminds us that regardless of whether Hegel held any influence over Mallarmé’s thinking, returning to the poetry itself can help us better understand 'our own epoch,' our contemporary situation, in ways not yet fully disclosed.’ — Christian R. Gelder, Colloquy 29, 2015, 80-90
  • ‘This study analyses the crucial role of Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry in the work of two of the twentieth century’s most important theorists: Maurice Blanchot and Jacques Derrida. Mallarmé’s Hegelianism, a long-contested issue in Mallarmé scholarship, assumes centre stage in Barnaby Norman’s understanding both of the poet’s development and of the position Blanchot and Derrida assign him as marking the transition from the Livre to Écriture.’ — Rebecca Pekron, French Studies 69.4, October 2015, 545-46
  • ‘Norman provides us with an imaginative reading of the reception of Mallarmé’s thought and work by two of the most influential French thinkers of the twentieth century; he returns frequently to the figure of Hegel and his notion of the end of art. This study helps to remind readers of the undeniably significant presence of the poet for more modern philosophy, while Norman avoids the pitfall of losing sight of Mallarmé’s exquisitely beautiful poetic vision.’ — Pamela A. Genova, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 44.1-2, 2015

Men of their Words: The Poetics of Masculinity in George Sand's Fiction
Nigel Harkness
Legenda (General Series) •24 August 2007

  • ‘This meticulously researched study makes a compelling argument to renegotiate the importance of masculinity in Sand's writing... His persuasive conclusions will therefore be of interest not only to scholars working on nineteenth-century France, but indeed to the wider fields of gender studies and literary criticism.’ — Forum for Modern Language Studies April 2009, 224)
  • ‘Nigel Harkness's aim in this excellent monograph is to liberate George Sand's masculinity from the restrictive autobiographical sphere of cross dressing and male pseudonymity and to situate it rather as the driving force of her literary texts. Drawing on a corpus of fifteen novels, he produces a series of authoritative close readings that demonstrate the extent to which the thinking of masculinity, and its inscription in literary representation, are inextricable for Sand.’ — Diana Knight, French Studies 64.2, April 2010
  • ‘Harkness's focused tracking of Sand's performances of poetic masculinity throughout this book undoubtedly furthers critical understanding of the highly complex and multiple narrative positions adopted in her fiction, especially its meta-discursive dimensions. His sensitive and often provocative close readings of Sand's works, especially Indiana and Lélia (in chapters 2 and 5), will inspire fresh appraisals of established Sand criticism.’ — Mary Orr, Modern and Contemporary France 17.3, August 2009

Method and Variation: Narrative in Early Modern French Thought
Edited by Emma Gilby and Paul White
Legenda (General Series) •28 May 2013

  • ‘Overall, this is an engaging volume that usefully emphasizes the narrative methods and less scientific genres which underlie early modern French thought and its philosophical fictions.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.2, April 2014, 230-31
  • ‘This timely and important volume addresses the role of narration in revealing early modern French belief patterns... In demonstrating the range of ways in which early modern authors reconfigure and renegotiate narrative’s relationship to thought, argument, and proof, the contributors to this volume together add critical understanding to the complex articulation of fable, history, and argument in the early modern period.’ — Allison Stedman, French Studies 68.4, October 2014, 542-43

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)

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

Montaigne in Transit: Essays in Honour of Ian Maclean
Edited by Neil Kenny, Richard Scholar and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016

  • ‘Montaigne in Transit proves one of the finest volumes on this overworked author... In a reflective Afterword, Ian Maclean celebrates the scholarly exchanges out of which this volume grew and the generosity inherent in intellectual work. Another aspect that ties these contributions together lies in how the authors foreground the practice of close reading. Such patience with ‘slow’ reading is a welcome change from more ambitious quantifiable, contextualizing, and politicizing forms of criticism that currently dominate the field. The contributors intelligently defend their choice not as an antidote or alternative to these other approaches but as a needed counterweight and complement.’ — George Hoffmann, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 658-59 (full text online)
  • ‘In a reading of Montaigne’s classical allusions in ‘Sur des Vers de Virgile’, Terence Cave finds the essayist resurrecting the dead: ‘The quotations from Virgil and Lucretius are haptic, erotic; they come to life, become bodies. And their life flows palpably over into Montaigne’s prose.’ Cave’s is the first of several essays in the wonderful collection Montaigne in Transit to explore metaphors for Montaigne’s thought and quotation practice, and to evaluate how we study Montaigne’s relation to other texts.’ — Peter Auger, Translation and Literature 27, 2019, 353-60 (full text online)
  • ‘In sum, the journey through these essays is well worth the effort and strongly recommended to seasoned specialists and fellow travelers interested in the historical development of learned culture in Europe from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century. This reviewer wishes them a bon voyage!’ — Michael Wolfe, Sixteenth Century Journal 49.3, 2018, 885-87