Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics
Rocío G. Sumillera
Legenda (General Series) •23 September 2019
- ‘Distrust of the role of originality in Renaissance poesis often leads literary scholars to prioritize logico-rhetorical accounts of invention, which recommended writers to select their topics from authoritative discursive repertoires. Rocío G. Sumillera’s meticulous critical history of poetic invention up to Renaissance England is a persuasive caveat about our need to revise those notions.’ — Zenón Luis-Martínez, Parergon 38.1, 2021, 260-61 (full text online)
- ‘Taken together, Sumillera and Baron's books [Scarlett Baron, The Riddle of Creativity] cover literature and theory from Aristotle to the present. Each book reaches widely across European languages, combining science, theology and linguistics with conventional literary works. They look from opposite directions at the vanishing point that is the Romantic ideal of the artist as a lamp or organic entity, existing free from influence of any kind. The scope and ambition of the two projects is impressive. There is a great deal here to admire.’ — Bart van Es, Times Literary Supplement 11 December 2020
- ‘This is a wide-ranging and well-argued piece of work, with a comprehensive and useful bibliography. It makes an extremely valuable contribution to the study of a concept which must be at the heart of our understanding of literary composition in the Renaissance.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 57.1, 2021, 142 (full text online)
- ‘All in all, this is a detailed yet wide-ranging scholarly book that will serve students and scholars equally well. Although its focus is English Renaissance poetics, the breadth of reference to European sources gives this study a notable ballast and breadth. Sumillera is particularly adept at the selection and presentation of primary quotations, finding the perfect examples — and plenty of them — to illustrate her argument. This makes the book a great resource, as well as a pleasure to read.’ — Catherine Bates, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 278-79 (full text online)
- ‘This much-needed book is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched chronological overview of the concept of the invention of topics (inventio) in poetry, as it was originally understood in classical rhetoric, that lies at the heart of Renaissance theories of imitation as individual composition.’ — Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation 44.4, Fall 2021, 311-13 (full text online)
SPQR in the USSR: Elena Shvarts’s Classical Antiquity
Georgina Barker
Legenda (General Series) •20 October 2022
- ‘The book is a treasure trove, and not just for those interested in antiquity. It was written after Shvarts’s death and after access to archival materials opened out a fuller picture of her notebooks, drafts, and discards. Barker takes excellent advantage of this bounty, amply illustrating her study with photographs of the poet and with copies of many manuscripts (which nearly always show how little Shvarts amended as she worked)... [Her] insightful reading of the brilliant poem Homo Musagetes is a fitting culmination of the entire book and a model for the kind of interpretive work that is still to come for many other Shvarts poems. We will all be building on Barker’s superb book in undertaking that work.’ — Stephanie Sandler, Russian Review 82, 2023, 535-36 (full text online)
- ‘Georgina Barker’s new book on Elena Shvarts’s classical reception is a welcome addition to the growing number of monographs on Russia’s literary reception of Greece and Rome... Overall, this book will be useful to scholars interested in classical reception in Russia. It will also serve in graduate-level seminars addressing reception studies and comparative literary approaches.’ — Zara Torlone, Modern Language Review 2024, 119.1, 176-78 (full text online)
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)
From the Enlightenment to Modernism: Three Centuries of German Literature
Edited by Carolin Duttlinger, Kevin Hilliard, and Charlie Louth
Legenda (General Series) •20 December 2021