Published July 2009

Imagining Terrorism: The Rhetoric and Representation of Political Violence in Italy 1969-2009
Edited by Pierpaolo Antonello and Alan O'Leary
Italian Perspectives 18

  • ‘This is a thought-provoking collection that requires the reader to engage with representations and form as critical sites of historical understanding.’ — Derek Duncan, Modern Language Review 106.3, 2011, 889-90 (full text online)
  • ‘For many, the murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 by the BR and the various neofascist bombings have become myths or legendary occurrences ones fraught with profound meaning for the human condition. Even some of the former militants and terrorists — the perpetrators, in other words — have participated in these productions (Moro’s killers, for example). In fact, one cannot help be left with the impression that the artists and the ex-militants are really talking to each other.’ — Leonard Weinberg, Journal of Modern History 84.3 (September 2012), 752-54
  • ‘This broad-ranging collection of fourteen essays is innovative in offering an extremely rich and multi-faceted portrait of this complex topic... makes a real contribution to show how terrorist brutality was expressed, encoded and schematized by the people involved in these dramatic events even before the violent actions became the object of rhetorical analysis.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 48.4 (October 2012), 490

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

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

Retrospectives: Essays in Literature, Poetics and Cultural History by Terence Cave
Terence Cave, edited by Neil Kenny and Wes Williams
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘A very welcome overview of several of the central themes of Cave’s work.’ — John D. Lyons, French Studies 65.1, January 2011, 93-94
  • ‘An excellent overview, enhanced by the editors’ astute introduction, of this highly influential critic’s ideas... an impressive testament to a distinguished and continuing critical career.’ — Emma Herdman, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1156-57 (full text online)

Emile Zola and the Artistry of Adaptation
Kate Griffiths
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This book could be grandly defined as an essay in intertextuality, intergenericity and transmodality... Such forbidding terminology should not by any means discourage the more general reader familiar with Zola’s works from engaging with, and almost certainly from enjoying, Kate Griffiths’s splendid study.’ — David Baguley, Bulletin of the Emile Zola Society 2010
  • ‘This is a book that refreshingly refuses to subscribe to clichés about Zola’s ‘pre-cinematic technique’. And in reading adaptations (both forward and back) against her selected texts, Griffiths provides for each of them an intelligent contribution to the thinking of students and specialists alike.’ — Robert Lethbridge, French Studies 65.3, July 2011, 398-99
  • ‘One of the most significant new books to be published concerning a major literary ‘canonical’ figure—Émile Zola—and the adaptations his prose generated... In particular, Griffiths’s work on La Terre is one of the best discussions of Antoine’s silent masterpiece I have read in years. Her scholarly text is readable, intellectually cogent, and illuminating for the student of Zola’s naturalist, experimental methodology, as formulated in his ‘scientific’ prose, and the ensuing, often multiple, film interpretations it generated. This is a superior study of literary–film interrelations, excellent and timely scholarship.’ — Robert Singer, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1160-61 (full text online)

Wilhelm Raabe: Global Themes - International Perspectives
Edited by Dirk Göttsche and Florian Krobb
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Wenn die Zuschreibung von 'Internationalität' zuweilen etwas sehr allgemein und unkonkret bleibt, dann ist dies der gewiss gut gemeinten Absicht, aus einem nationalen Dichter einen Autor der Weltliteratur zu machen, geschuldet. Dass nun ein exzellentes Handbuch zu Raabe in englischer Sprache vorliegt, mag die Internationalität eines Autors und der Forschung zu seinem Werk eigentlich bereits hinreichend belegen. Somit bleibt nur zu hoffen, dass es die Übersetzung weiterer Werke Raabes ins Englische ebenso befördert wie die Publikation eines Raabe-Handbuchs in deutscher Sprache. Denn für letzteres liegt nun ein gelungenes Vorbild vor.’ — Lucas Marco Gisi, Jahrbuch der Raabe-Gesellschaft 2010, 137-43
  • ‘There is a potentially massive argument to be engaged here regarding the future of arts and humanities research. The editors of this book are to be congratulated for setting the terms of that debate and for showing a good deal of what might be done. It is a fine beginning to our oncoming work.’ — Thomas Docherty, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 401-04
  • ‘An excellent anthology of essays... Whether or not one agrees with Jeffrey L. Sammons’s contention that Wilhelm Raabe ‘was the major nineteenth-century novelist in the German language between Goethe and Fontane’..., one leaves this volume convinced that he was certainly one of the most attuned to the impact of Germany’s forays into the wider world on those who travelled abroad and even on those who remained at home.’ — Todd Kontje, Modern Language Review 106.2, April 2011, 584-86 (full text online)
  • ‘Whether the three volumes reviewed here represent the end of Raabe's rehabilitation or the beginning of a new phase, a global phase, of Raabe scholarship remains to be seen, but their publication is indeed equicklich - refreshing.’ — Robert L. Jamison, Monatshefte 103.1, 2011, 126-31

Sensibility, Reading and Illustration: Spectacles and Signs in Graffigny, Marivaux and Rousseau
Ann Lewis
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘A detailed and compelling analysis... Moreover Lewis skilfully combines insights from various fields (literary history, genre studies, theory of representation, reader response) to generate thought-provoking analysis, to provide a nuanced assessment of sensibility, and to suggest additional avenues that warrant investigation.’ — Diane Beelen Woody, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 23.3, Spring 2011, 586-89
  • ‘Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and handsomely produced, this book is a significant contribution to scholarship on French eighteenth-century literature... Readers should be glad that Lewis has so adeptly read the signs and spectacles.’ — Heidi Bostic, French Review 84.5, April 2011, 1029-30
  • ‘Précis, bien informé et solidement documenté, l’ouvrage constitue un apport précieux et stimulant aux recherches sur l’illustration romanesque auquel il articule une réflexion intéressante sur le genre et la réception du roman sensible.’ — Florence Magnot-Ogilvy, French Studies 66.2, April 2012, 245-46
  • ‘[Lewis's] meticulous approach is valuable in providing an at-a-glance overview of the numerous illustrated editions of these well-known novels as well as a point of reference for researchers in the field. The consideration of nineteenth- and twentieth-century illustrations adds depth to Lewis’s study and gives credence to her theory of illustration as a ‘reading’ of a text at various points in history. This is exemplified by the ‘Romantic’ interpretation of the character of Saint-Preux in the nineteenth century, for example, or the eroticised presentation of La Vie de Marianne for a French audience of the 1930s.’ — Una Brogan, Journal of Eighteenth Century Studies 35.3, September 2012, 444-45
  • ‘En somme, Intimicy and distance parvient à ouvrir des horizons insoupçonnés sur un concept indissociable de la modernité et saura profiter à nombre de chercheur.cheuse.s qui s’intéressent aux cultures du XIXe siècle.’ — Daniel Long, Dalhousie French Studies 119, 2021, 184-185

The Power of Disturbance: Elsa Morante's Aracoeli
Edited by Sara Fortuna and Manuele Gragnolati
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘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

A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings
S. S. Prawer
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This magisterial survey of British and American intellectual history from the sixteenth century to the present, as viewed through the lens of the creator of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, confirms once more that Prawer remains one of our discipline’s leading spokesmen and luminaries.’ — Robert K. Weninger, Comparative Critical Studies 7.2–3, 2010, 395-401
  • ‘Based on an intensive study of the original German text of Freud’s writings, letters, and journals. This is the first book to make a full and systematic map of Freud’s use of English literature. Freud was fascinated by writings from many nations and languages, and his use of English shows the great range of his reading... Though he was a reader par excellence, he was also a case study in how world literature can be used by men and women who are not professional literary scholars or critics - and of how much it can come to mean to them, and to their sense of who they are.’ — The Year's Work in English Studies 2011, 691)
  • ‘Shows the remarkable range of reading and the gift for lively and attractive expression that characterized all his work... The result is much the fullest study of Freud’s Anglophilia that has yet been written.’ — Ritchie Robertson, Modern Language Review 108.4, October 2013, 1262-64 (full text online)

The Syllables of Time: Proust and the History of Reading
Teresa Whitington
Research Monographs in French Studies 26

  • ‘En faisant de la lecture et des livres, le cœur de la Recherche, A. Watt et T. Whitington soulignent et établissent, en fin de compte, une communauté de lecteurs; la récurrence des épisodes de lecture invite nécessairement le lecteur du roman à s'interroger sur sa propre condition et sur ses identifications possibles avec le héros. Par un effet de miroir récurrent, le lecteur est amené à se voir lire, à retrouver ses sensations de lectures d'enfance et à se poser inévitablement la question de l'écriture. T. Whitington en proposant un judicieux rapprochement entre un passage de Jeunes filles et le Contre Sainte-Beuve identifie cette communauté de lecteurs. Le narrateur, évoquant en effet le «cœur de celui qui, assassin dans la vie, reste tendre comme amateur de feuilletons, [et se tourne] vers le faible, le juste et le persécuté», semble se souvenir du credo que défend le narrateur du Contre Sainte-Beuve, selon lequel il convient de distinguer nettement le moi social du moi créateur.’ — Matthieu Vernet; joint review with Adam Watt, Reading in Proust’s À la Recherche, OUP 2009, Fabula 26 April 2010
  • ‘Manages to address some of the complex and multi-layered realities at play in any history of reading and provides some valuable evidence for Proust’s significant contribution to such a history.’ — Kathrin Yacavone, Modern Language Review 106.4, 2011, 1162-63 (full text online)

Imagining Jewish Art: Encounters with the Masters in Chagall, Guston, and Kitaj
Aaron Rosen
Studies In Comparative Literature 16

  • ‘Rosen's effort to identify and elucidate the Jewish concerns of these three very different artists is penetrating and his analysis of the works in question is consistently insightful. Though the exact nature of Jewish art remains slippery, Rosen’s book is a worthy investigation of the ways in which the most evidently Jewish art can borrow from the least Jewish sources, and the ways in which less apparently Jewish art can have unexpected Jewish resonances.’ — Ezra Glinter, Zeek at Jewcy July 21, 2009
  • ‘Bypassing past scholars, critics, and curators who have sought the quintessential nature of Jewish art... but failed to come up with the answer, Rosen is your man.’ — The Jewish Telegraph November 20, 2009, p. 29)
  • ‘For lovers of American art, Jewish art, history or theology, Dr Rosen has approached the subject comprehensively... Making an exceptional input to the exchange of ideas and channel of communication between religion and the fine arts, Dr Rosen processes how any type of Jewish art may serve deep-seated Jewish ideas of family, tradition, and homeland... Dr Rosen communicates his ideas succinctly, in an accessible manner.’ — The American December, 2009, p. 35)
  • ‘Unashamedly scholarly yet written in a style that is refreshingly accessible, achieving a rare and satisfying balance between detailed, even minute, analyses of specific works of art and a broader sense of purpose, underpinned by an intimate knowledge of a wide range of theological and philosophical texts.... Imagining Jewish Art concludes with an excellent and immensely thought-provoking chapter entitled ‘Brushes with the Past’, suggestive of enough new avenues of intellectual enquiry to fuel several more volumes. While other scholars (both Jewish and non-Jewish) may indeed take up some of these challenges, I have little doubt that we shall be hearing more of Aaron Rosen in the future.’ — Monica Bohm-Duchen, Art & Christianity 62, Summer 2010, 14
  • ‘Towards the end of his book, Rosen explains that his intention has been to illustrate 'something of the unique, productive tensions which can arise when the themes and symbols in works by non-Jewish artists are made to "speak Jewish"' (106). In this he is entirely successful. The reader learns a good deal about the three artists, and can see in practice how a Jewish artist, interested in questions of Jewish history and identity, may engage the art-historical tradition in producing a new kind of visual imagery.’ — Janet Wolff, Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 9.3, 2010, 437-39
  • ‘A probing and accessible interdisciplinary contribution to the field of modern Jewish art.’ — Samantha Baskind, Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies 29.4, Summer 2011, 177-79
  • ‘The book is at its strongest when it employs formal comparisons to demonstrate the close visual conversations with European ‘Masters’ of religious art (such as Grü̈newald, Uccello and della Francesca) that Chagall, Guston and Kitaj each engage in.’ — Alana M. Vincent, Literature and Theology 27.1 (March 2013), 116