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

Portuguese Modernisms: Multiple Perspectives on Literature and the Visual Arts
Edited by Steffen Dix and Jerónimo Pizarro
Legenda (General Series) 4 February 2011

John Ruskin's Continental Tour 1835: The Written Records and Drawings
Edited by Keith Hanley and Caroline S. Hull
Legenda (General Series) 19 December 2016

  • ‘At a time when scholars often find it difficult to find support for editions of archival and biographical materials relating to significant cultural figures, it is pleasing that this important volume has found its way into print through the endeavours of the editors and the MHRA, whose Legenda imprint makes high-quality editions of such materials available... The edition is perfectly conceived and delivers something approaching perfection. It should be of interest beyond Ruskin Studies, particularly to scholars of Romantic art, poetry, and landscape tourism, nineteenth-century travel, and Victorian science.’ — Mark Frost, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 863-64 (full text online)
  • ‘The interest of the texts collected in this volume is on the whole remarkable. They represent a variety of literary genres ranging from the prose diary, the letter in verse, the dramatic sketch, the short story narrative, genres through which the same travel matter is shaped and reshaped, demonstrating the precociousness and versatility of Ruskin’s genius, his witty ironic vein, but also his brilliant mastery of prose... The recent interest in emotional labour involved in diary and travel writing will certainly profit from the fresh material unearthed by this critical edition.’ — Emma Sdegno, Review of English Studies 69, September 2018, 803-05 (full text online)

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

Proust Writing Photography: Fixing the Fugitive in À la recherche du temps perdu
Áine Larkin
Legenda (General Series) 26 August 2011

  • ‘Throughout the volume, Larkin’s close readings often provide fresh insights by situating themselves at a tangent to existing interpretations. In this way they form an individual trajectory, turning the study into a valuable source of orientation and stimulation for experts and newcomers to the field alike.’ — Katja Haustein, French Studies 67.1 (January 2013), 115-16
  • ‘Áine Larkin makes an excellent contribution to this already well established field of study with this systematic analysis of the manifold ways in which Proust appropriates photography for both thematic and stylistic purposes.’ — Marion Schmid, Modern and Contemporary France 20.4 (September 2012), 514-16

Reading Games in the Greek Novel
Eleni Papargyriou
Legenda (General Series) 25 March 2011

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

Dante's Plurilingualism: Authority, Knowledge, Subjectivity
Edited by Sara Fortuna, Manuele Gragnolati and Jürgen Trabant
Legenda (General Series) 6 September 2010

  • ‘From the introduction to the concluding interview with Giorgio Pressburger, this volume of essays is characterized by both authoritative contributions from major figures in Dante studies (Baranski, Gragnolati, Pertile) and also by genuinely original lines of enquiry. Dante’s Plurilingualism constitutes an indispensable point of reference for contemporary Dante studies, an ideal companion to the new Dante editions that have recently appeared, and also acts as a constant spur to reread all of the poet’s works, and to appreciate the ‘plurilingualism’ that is inherent even in those works that that precede the Comedy.’ — Federica Pich, Lettere Italiane 2011, 323-28
  • ‘Although we also find essays that offer a strong historicizing or linguistic focus and others that are powerful contributions to the methodologies and findings traditionally associated with Dante studies, the volume remains of particular note (and importance) for its concern to open Dante up to dialogue across disciplines and to relate him to contemporary debates.’ — Simon Gilson, Modern Language Review 107.1, January 2012, 292-93 (full text online)
  • ‘Colpisce e affascina, in Dante’s Plurilingualism, una ben percepibile disposizione all’audacia interpretativa, al “saggio” come esperimento intellettuale; ciò che convince, nell’insieme, è che non si sia di fronte alla mera esibizione di uno “stile” critico – pur di- versamente delineato –, ma ad un molteplice tentativo di indagine su Dante, inteso come oggetto e al tempo stesso soggetto non tanto di una determinata stagione della lingua e della letteratura italiane, quanto di una più ampia e complessa storia culturale.’ — Martino Marazzi, L'Alighieri 39, June 2012, 160-64
  • ‘Proprio nella lingua che usiamo, con cui scriviamo, possiamo essere convinti che Dante sia arrivato prima di noi e che ci abbia lasciato una grandissima eredità. Gli interventi di questo volume riescono a mettere in evidenza tutti gli aspetti per cui la lingua di Dante e il suo modo di utilizzarla appaiono ancora oggi come un 'miracolo inconcepibile'.’ — Irene Baccarini, Dante VIII, 2011, 227-30

Zola, The Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation
Susan Harrow
Legenda (General Series) 11 February 2010

  • ‘Susan Harrow’s elegant and erudite study represents a daring departure from traditional readings of Zola’s work... a genuinely ground-breaking study that promises to trigger a seismic shift in the way Zola is read.’ — Hannah Thompson, French Studies 65.4, 2011, 541-42
  • ‘Makes a strong and very welcome plea for close readings of Zola’s novels, focusing, in the words of Mallarmé, an attentive reader and admirer of the novelist, on the ‘folds and fractures’ of the text... Deserves to be widely read for the perceptive and innovative readings that it contains.’ — David Baguley, Modern Language Review 107.2, April 2012, 626-27 (full text online)
  • ‘Overall, this is a brilliant and path-breaking work, one that largely succeeds in remediating the oversights of much previous criticism and in demonstrating how (and why) to read Zola today... An important and stimulating book that should be compulsory reading not only for Zola specialists, but indeed for anyone interested in nineteenth-century France and the writing of modernity.’ — Jessica Tanner, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014

English Responses to French Poetry 1880-1940: Translation and Mediation
Jennifer Higgins
Legenda (General Series) 12 May 2011

  • ‘The account of Huxley’s version of Rimbaud’s ‘Les Chercheuses de poux’ is particularly fine, and laurels awarded to Beckett’s ‘Drunken Boat’ are shown to be well deserved. In this respect, Higgins’s readings are consonant with some of her own general arguments, for she frequently conveys the sense of a critical mind finding out more about the original text, as well as testing the qualities of the translation. In her hands, both French and English texts are made to speak to and of each other.’ — Matthew Creasy, Translation and Literature 21, 2012, 255-61
  • ‘This rewarding book deftly handles — and illuminates — a wide range of sources... a tantalizing taste of a fascinating area for further research.’ — Adam Watt, Modern Language Review 107.3, July 2012, 897-98 (full text online)
  • ‘In the years preceding the Second World War [...] a diminution in the quantity of translated material is compensated for by a greater acknowledgement of the centrality of translation to the development of national — and transnational — literary cultures. This study is to be commended for its consistent advocacy and demonstration of that centrality.’ — Michael G. Kelly, French Studies 66.4 (October 2012), 572

The Truth of Realism: A Reassessment of the German Novel 1830-1900
John Walker
Legenda (General Series) 6 July 2011

  • ‘An ambitious contribution to a revaluation of German realism that will have to be weighed and taken into account in any further treatment of the topic.’ — Jeffrey L. Sammons, Monatshefte 104.1, 2012, 130-33
  • ‘This volume offers a new approach to German Realism and contributes to research that establishes a reading of German Realist literature as in no ways inferior to other European Realist traditions, which has been the dominant viewpoint for decades.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 49.2, 2013, 227
  • ‘Cultural studies, systems theory, postcolonial studies, gender studies, media history, and a number of other more recent approaches have given new impetus to research into nineteenth-century Realism and initiated a reassessment of German Realism within the overarching European development from Romanticism to Modernism. Walker’s study of a small number of selected novels by Keller, Raabe, and Fontane makes an interesting contribution to this reassessment by arguing that ‘the distinguishing capacity of German narrative realism, and the source of that realism’s unique contribution to the European tradition’ is the critique of internalized ideology.’ — Dirk Göttsche, Modern Language Review 109.3, July 2014, 847-48 (full text online)

Victor Hugo, Jean-Paul Sartre, and the Liability of Liberty
Bradley Stephens
Legenda (General Series) 12 May 2011

  • ‘Liberty may be a liability, but in Hugo and in Sartre it has two strong, subtle, and surprisingly complementary exponents. For the detail of its analyses and for the breadth of its final perspectives, this volume is, therefore, a welcome addition to the Legenda imprint.’ — Owen Heathcote, French Studies 66.3, July 2012, 422-23
  • ‘Bradley Stephens explores unexpected, intriguing connections between Victor Hugo's and Jean-Paul Sartre's visions of liberty in this clearly written study... Brings a unique analysis of Hugo's and Sartre's work, offering insights that may challenge readers to reconsider their previous understandings.’ — Marva A. Barnett, Modern and Contemporary France 20.2, 2012, 281-82
  • ‘Stephen’s work provides equally valuable insights for Hugo and Sartre specialists as it does for students of modern culture. Previous scholarship is pleasingly woven into Stephens’s argument and his writing style is quick and fluid, itself more dynamic as the work progresses.’ — Andrea S. Thomas, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 41.3-4, 2013, 326-28
  • ‘Informed by the latest literary criticism, up to speed with philosophical debates, knowledgeable on secondary literature in English and in French on both Hugo and Sartre... Stephens sets up a dialogue between Hugo, the nineteenth-century writer and Sartre, whom Foucault (in-)famously referred to as ‘a man of the nineteenth century’... This book is excellent on philosophy of language and moral philosophy, and it should be of interest to scholars of either Hugo or Sartre, or both, as well as to post-modernists interested in human experience and freedom.’ — Jean-Pierre Boulé, Sartre Studies International 19.1, 2013, 91-102

Proust, the One, and the Many: Identity and Difference in A la recherche du temps perdu
Erika Fülöp
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2012

  • ‘Il trouvera une bonne place parmi les livres cherchant à éclairer la complexité du roman de Proust à partir de l’approche philosophique.’ — Pascal Ifri, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 41.3-4, 2013, 343-45
  • ‘Fülöp compellingly considers the narrator’s ‘Liminal states of consciousness’ (his experience of waking up, his observing Albertine sleeping, and his drunkenness at Rivebelle) as moments when the world’s challenging multiplicity—and that of the unknowable, plural Other as represented by his beloved Albertine—become, for a time, harmonious and manageable... Will reward readers interested in the overlap and lines of affinity between the domains of literature and philosophy.’ — Adam Watt, Modern and Contemporary France 21.2, 2013, 245-46
  • ‘This well-researched volume covers a vast territory and is a welcome contribution in a field of Proust studies that has long been exploited but is far from being exhausted.’ — Anna Magdalena Elsner, French Studies 67.3, July 2013, 428-29
  • ‘L’originalité de ce livre clair, convaincant et bien documenté consiste à offrir de la Recherche une perspective éthique au sens où le narrateur, qui dès le départ poursuit un projet littéraire, est aussi en quête d’une approche harmonieuse du monde, de la vie et de l’autre.’ — Dominique Poncelet, French Review 88.2, October 2014, 227
  • ‘L’ouvrage d’Erika Fülöp se recommande non seulement par son audace de pensée mais, presque d’avantage encore, par la clarté avec laquelle sont exposées les notions philosophiques qui servent d’instrument à la démonstration. Voué à la philosophie proustienne, cet ouvrage stimulera aussi la réflexion consacrée à la lecture (autre état de conscience liminaire), à l’animalité et à la notion d’inconscient.’ — Dagmar Wieser, Fabula 16.5, May-June 2015

Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism
Edited by David Adams and Galin Tihanov
Legenda (General Series) 26 August 2011

Pessoa in an Intertextual Web: Influence and Innovation
Edited by David G. Frier
Legenda (General Series) 30 January 2012

  • ‘As its title suggests, [the book] provides Pessoan scholars and the general reader with a lot of thematic variety and in-depth insights. Some of the papers bring fresh perspectives on topics that had been critically broached before, but are here seen from enriching perspectives. Other papers provide refreshingly new arguments. These are two of the many reasons why one would wish to recommend this volume, both to the specialist and to the student who is starting out on the path to his or her own Pessoa.’ — Francisco Cota Fagundes, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 110.4, September 2013, 1058-59

Symbol and Intuition: Comparative Studies in Kantian and Romantic-Period Aesthetics
Edited by Helmut Hühn and James Vigus
Legenda (General Series) 21 December 2012

  • ‘Skilfully planned and structured, the volume offers original research on less familiar material while it lucidly covers most of the essential formulations of the symbol from the late eighteenth century onwards, thus speaking to readers of different backgrounds... It is Hühn and Vigus’s broad conception of the subject that ensures the collection’s originality and secures its unique place among the increasing studies of the symbol.’ — Stephanie Dumke, Angermion 7, 2014, 191-93
  • ‘This rich volume successfully inducts its readers into key aesthetic-philosophical debates around 1800, while at the same time breaking new ground by extending our understanding of the variations and functions of ‘symbol’ and ‘intuition’ within the works of individual writers and thinkers. It also makes meaningful comparisons and connections between texts that have not been discussed together before. The editors have drawn together a wide range of international scholars from the fields of German, English, and philosophy into a timely discussion.’ — James Hodkinson, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 786-88 (full text online)

Gender, Nation and the Formation of the Twentieth-Century Mexican Literary Canon
Sarah E. L. Bowskill
Legenda (General Series) 6 July 2011

  • ‘Its coherent, well-sustained, and highly persuasive argument is likely to inspire others to take on this and the other challenges outlined in the conclusion. Indeed, as much as Bowskill’s book delves into the archives of reviews of the past, this is also a forward-looking study.’ — Amit Thakkar, Modern Language Review 110.1, January 2015, 273-74 (full text online)
  • ‘Sarah E. L. Bowskill’s study on gender, nation and canon-formation is a groundbreaking treatment of Mexican literature. She dissects a series of canonised and uncanonised novels to prove how the former were privileged by the state and how critics (un)consciously rewarded certain works while ignoring others... Bowskill makes us wonder why no one had deconstructed such critical happenings before, given that nation-building was the overpowering impulse to put Mexico in the literary map of modernity.’ — Francisco A. Lomelí, Bulletin of Latin American Research 34.1, 2014, 106-07

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

Traces of Trauma in W. G. Sebald and Christoph Ransmayr
Dora Osborne
Legenda (General Series) 4 March 2013

  • ‘Brought countless things to light about The Emigrants and Austerlitz that I am extremely grateful for, and I know I’ll never read either of these books again without saying a silent “thank you” to Osborne for opening my eyes to a new way of looking at them.’ — Terry Pitts, Vertigo 8 June 2013
  • ‘The detailed analyses and dynamic argumentation in addition to the illuminating introduction of the concept of ‘post-postwar literature’ make this study a significant contribution to scholarship on both Ransmayr and Sebald and to critical considerations of twentieth-century post-Holocaust literature in German more broadly.’ — Lynn L. Wolff, Modern Language Review 111.1, January 2016, 294-96 (full text online)
  • ‘Osborne has done a great service in awakening Sebald scholars to a kindred spirit in Ransmayr with a long-overdue systematic comparison of “traces of trauma” in the works of both immensely important writers, one a storied member of the literary establishment, one who will remain, even posthumously, an outsider looking in.’ — Mark R. McCulloh, Monatshefte 108.1, 2016, 150-52

Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile
Carmen Bugan
Legenda (General Series) 23 February 2013

  • ‘This book is a marvellous accumulation of insights and openings into Heaney’s work in the context of his affinities with the four East European poets with whom he shares an acute awareness that history is ‘the mother of culture’, as Brodsky put it in a comment on Herbert. In the minutiae of her study she has provided Heaney students with a valuable resource that will be challenging to surpass.’ — Gerry Smyth, Modern Poetry in Translation 2013 no. 3, October 2013, 106-11
  • ‘Though many critics have mentioned their influence, Carmen Bugan’s monograph is the first to offer a detailed, in-depth study of Heaney’s relationship with East European poets... This is a very good book, a massively and precisely documented scholarly study, written by someone who has a consummate knowledge of her subject.’ — Adolphe Haberer, The European English Messenger 22.2, 2013, 82-85
  • ‘A well-documented and insightful study of one of the few aspects of Seamus Heaney’s work that still needs attention. As Irish studies are becoming increasingly comparative and intercultural, this is a very welcome addition to the academic discussion on Seamus Heaney’s work and on Irish literature in general.’ — Florence Impens, Irish Studies Review 2014
  • ‘Bugan's book demonstrates just how productive cultural exchange between poets East and West can be. She shows how Heaney borrows the concept of exile - a Cold War topos par excellence - and successfully recasts it in the Irish context, imbuing his work with an ethical complexity and self-awareness that continues to resonate with readers from all corners of the globe.’ — Connor Doak, Slavic and East European Journal 58.2, Summer 2014, 166-67
  • ‘A densely researched and lucid study of a poetic congeniality that Heaney experienced with four East European poets... Published in the year that saw the death of this most influential of contemporary poets, it represents a fitting tribute to Heaney’s relational poetics.’ — Rui Carvalho Homem, Translation and Literature 23.3, 2014, 412-16

Transformative Change in Western Thought: A History of Metamorphosis from Homer to Hollywood
Edited by Ingo Gildenhard and Andrew Zissos
Legenda (General Series) 4 March 2013

  • ‘This audacious volume is concerned with nothing less than the almost 3000-year metamorphosis of the concept of metamorphosis in the Western imaginary... A most compelling entry in the history of ideas.’ — Dan Curley, Bryn Mawr Classical Review online, 2014.09.41
  • ‘The volume is exciting, enjoyable as well as serious, and therefore not only suggestive for future research but also set to be useful in teaching. I would happily assign relevant portions of it in courses on classical traditions and receptions. Whether in the classroom or elsewhere, it deserves to reach a large audience.’ — Benjamin Eldon Stevens, American Journal of Philology 135.3, Fall 2014, 492-96

Narrative Responses to the Trauma of the French Revolution
Katherine Astbury
Legenda (General Series) 10 October 2012

  • ‘Katherine Astbury’s welcome monograph includes within its purview a range of now forgotten texts and successfully questions the established view that the Revolution had little impact on novels written in the years following 1789.’ — Michael Tilby, French Studies 67.4, October 2013, 566
  • ‘Astbury offers an original theoretical approach to the fiction of the 1790s and sheds new light on many of these forgotten texts. Her study will be welcomed by eighteenth-century scholars.’ — Ruth P. Thomas, New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century Spring 2014, 11.1, 86-88
  • ‘One of the great merits of the book is that Astbury has actually read, rather than glossed, these unloved novels. As a result, she can demonstrate how ostensibly escapist fiction was saturated with contemporary references... The book provides fresh and detailed exposition of key novels within the revolutionary corpus, and triumphantly succeeds in making a case for the political sub-currents bubbling away within some seemingly innocuous fiction.’ — Tom Stammers, French History March 2014, 28.1, 126-27
  • ‘Astbury’s account of 'The English Novel and the Literary Press in France during the Revolutionary Decade' is the center and triumph of her book. In this chapter, she makes a 'systematic examination of editors' and translators' choices' that reveal a dynamic, cross-Channel conversation about the convulsions in France and their consequences.’ — Gina Luria Walker, European Romantic Review 25.4, 2014, 522-27
  • ‘Astbury’s clear, elegant prose engages the reader and Astbury convincingly shows how the fiction of the Revolutionary decade, while perhaps not overtly political, nonetheless responded to Revolutionary events—whether through portrayals of moral regeneration in 1791 or through tales of exile in 1797.’ — Annie K. Smart, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘Succeeds in changing the terms of a debate that had relegated a decade of literature to virtual oblivion. Astbury is absolutely right to insist on the historical and literary significance of the fiction of the 1790s. Given the historical impact of these years, it seems extraordinary that later generations of scholars have expressed such little interest in these works.’ — Lesley H. Walker, Modern Language Review 110.2, April 2015, 547-48 (full text online)
  • ‘Katherine Astbury’s Narrative Responses offers a fascinating counterpoint to the many studies that have focused on literary culture in pre-revolutionary France. Astbury asks important questions about novels produced during the Revolution: What kinds of texts did contemporaries want to read? How influenced were their authors by current events? And, finally, how political were those texts?’ — Mette Harder, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 28.3, Spring 2016, 593-94
  • ‘Le livre de Katherine Astbury mérite incontestablement d’être recommandé. Fondé sur une approche théorique et méthodologique clairement définie, il explore avec minutie un corpus de textes souvent méconnus (en laissant délibérément de côté les œuvres de Sade et Rétif) et a le mérite de ne pas proposer une lecture myope des œuvres de la période qui, pour n’être pas toutes ouvertement consacrées à l’écriture des événements, n’en livrent pas moins un regard sur l’Histoire et la Révolution.’ — Paul Kompanietz, Dix-huitième siècle 46, 2014, 724-25

Dream Cities: Utopia and Prose by Poets in Nineteenth-Century France
Greg Kerr
Legenda (General Series) 21 December 2012

  • ‘This is a valuable and ambitious study which operates deftly on the edge of cultural and intellectual history and successfully inflects our understanding of the emergence, and the evolution, of a literary form.’ — Claire White, Journal of European Studies 43, 2013, 378-79
  • ‘An ambitious inquiry into key structural and thematic aspects of poetic prose in nineteenth-century France, Greg Kerr’s Dream Cities combines a diverse array of primary sources and theoretical frameworks... Of particular interest in this book is Kerr’s attention to textual innovations pursued by several Saint-Simonian writers, including Barthélémy-Prosper Enfantin, Michel Chevalier, Charles Duveyrier, and Emile Barrault.’ — Suzanne F. Braswell, H-France 13, November 2013, 175
  • ‘In this study Greg Kerr intriguingly argues that the contemporaneous development of the prose poem is closely associated with utopian dreaming, as if Baudelaire’s dream of a prose poétique, sufficiently supple and abrupt to adapt itself to the ‘mouvements lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience’ ... could alone do justice to these new social and physical structures.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, French Studies 68.1, January 2014, 118
  • ‘This work is a fascinating study of the ways in which the modern metropolis altered not only the content, but also the formal innovations of several nineteenth-century French writers... An innovative and valuable contribution to both urban and literary studies.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1, January 2014, 128
  • ‘A significant contribution to our understanding of the ways that utopian and journalistic writing can be juxtaposed alongside the prose poem and other visual and architectural projections of urban futurity. Kerr convincingly shows how this set of disparate phenomena collectively reflects the dynamic, uncertain, and ultimately unfulfilled desires of a society en quête de forme.’ — Daniel Sipe, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 43.1-2, 2014
  • ‘Investigations of the ‘poème en prose’ as a hybrid form are multiple, and Kerr’s arguments add to them. His aims, however, are distinctive. Rather than seek to explain such hybridity by tracing the form’s identity or development within a specific historical tradition, he presents a more fluid and open kind of contextualization, in which new awareness of unfamiliar utopian rhetoric contributes to our understanding of the urban prose poem. Notions of hybridity are thereby extended and enriched.’ — Richard Hobbs, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 870-71 (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

Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages
Edited by Manuele Gragnolati, Tristan Kay, Elena Lombardi and Francesca Southerden
Legenda (General Series) 1 June 2012

  • ‘A series of Dante symposia organized by Manuele Gragnolati and colleagues over the past few years have brought youthful vitality to an ancient field... There is much careful scholarship and thoughtful reading in this book, which should attract Dante and medieval studies scholars alike, particularly those interested in contemporary critical approaches to medieval texts.’ — Gary Cestaro, Renaissance Quarterly 66.1 (Spring 2013), 323-24
  • ‘As well as offering several original contributions on this fundamental aspect of Dante’s work, it seeks to situate the Florentine writer more effectively within the broader spectrum of medieval culture and to establish greater intellectual exchange between Dante scholars and those from other disciplines.’ — unsigned notice, Studi Medievali 53.2 (2012), 1029-30
  • ‘The essays not only present a rich view of contemporary thinking on medieval notions and expressions of desire but address some of the most compelling issues of modern Dante and medieval scholarship... desire in the medieval context emerges as an issue to be expressed through the unique capabilities of poetry, an experience to be physically, spiritually, and emotionally undergone, and, ultimately, a state to be manifested in the very act of writing.’ — Ruth Chester, Modern Language Review 109.1, January 2014, 221-22 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a well-conceived collection, with an excellent bibliography, that will be valuable both for Dante scholars and every medievalist or early modernist with an interest in topics related to desire: the body, perception, memory, mysticism, just to name a few. The volume achieves a rare balance of interdisciplinarity and cohesiveness, bringing together approaches to the text as diverse as queer theory and translation studies, but maintaining a common intent to map desire as a hermeneutic tool in Dante studies and beyond.’ — Eleonora Stoppino, Speculum 89.3, 2014, 773-74
  • ‘This is a very useful source for Dante scholars, because it offers original and innovative contributions on the many-sided aspects of desire. [...] It is also a very valuable study for any scholar interested in the topic on a comparative or interdisciplinary level and seeks to illustrate how the current discourse on desire can apply to Dante and the medieval world.’ — Niccolino Applauso, Italica 90.4, Winter 2013
  • ‘This interesting interdisciplinary collection contributes significantly to our growing understanding of desire in the Middle Ages.’ — Beatrice Priest, Medium Aevum 82.2, 2013
  • ‘Il punto di forza di questo volume risiede a mio avviso nell'impiego di originali modelli d'analisi dell'opera dell'Alighieri che, offrendo percorsi inediti e accostamenti seppur talora arditi, hanno il pregio di costituire un effervescente contributo al panorama degli studi danteschi. Proprio la materia d'analisi, il desiderio, che si pone come proteiforme agente di cambiamento, l'insieme di questi articoli non manchera' di stimolare nuovi indirizzi di ricerca.’ — Gabriella Addivinola, L'Alighieri 42, 2013