Published June 2013
Prometheus in the Nineteenth Century: From Myth to Symbol
Caroline Corbeau-Parsons
Studies In Comparative Literature 25
- ‘The truly interdisciplinary reach of Corbeau-Parsons’ work... makes it much more than (just) an exercise in comparative literature... What emerges from Corbeau-Parsons’ engaging study and her analysis of some stunning works of art is a powerful sense of the remarkable autonomy of the Prometheus figure, so much so that one is almost tempted to echo Wilamowitz in Der Glaube der Hellenen and exclaim: ‘The gods are there’!’ — Paul Bishop, Journal of European Studies 44.1, 2014, 81-82
- ‘A well-written, systematic and comprehensive examination of the Prometheus myth and its many artistic adaptations and nuances.’ — Harriet Hustis, BARS Review 45, 2015
- ‘Throughout this impressive book, which forms part of the Legenda Studies in Comparative Literature series, Caroline Corbeau-Parsons explores the Symbolist fascination with the Prometheus myth, tracing its origins in antiquity, its rediscovery in the Renaissance, its centrality in versions of German, French, and English Romanticism, and finally its use by Mallarmé, Moreau, and others.’ — Paul Wright, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 788-89 (full text online)
Published September 2013
Iris Murdoch and Elias Canetti: Intellectual Allies
Elaine Morley
Studies In Comparative Literature 29
- ‘As Elaine Morley aptly observes in her exciting and innovative book, the majority of publications foreground personality and relationship issues but allow little room for discussion of the creative affinity between the two authors... The much-needed shift of focus from the personal to the literary and philosophical in Morley’s analysis of Murdoch and Canetti as intellectual allies is path-breaking.’ — Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Modern Language Review 109.4, October 2014, 1142-43 (full text online)
Likenesses: Translation, Illustration, Interpretation
Matthew Reynolds
Studies In Comparative Literature 30
- ‘The collection reveals an impressive breadth of scholarship, travelling between disciplines and across centuries from George Stubbs’s equestrian paintings, through the more familiar Reynoldian territory of Robert Browning, to the conspicuously contemporary, ‘Dante on the Tube’. This diversity effectively demonstrates ‘continuities’ in literature, impressing upon the reader the contemporary relevance of earlier works through juxtaposition.’ — Rebecca Butler, Modern Language Review 110.3, July 2015, 793-94 (full text online)
Published April 2014
Architecture, Travellers and Writers: Constructing Histories of Perception 1640-1950
Anne Hultzsch
Studies In Comparative Literature 26
Published July 2014
Exile and Nomadism in French and Hispanic Women's Writing
Kate Averis
Studies In Comparative Literature 31
- ‘Averis skilfully negotiates a corpus that encompasses six writers, two languages, and several nations in an engaging style and with careful structuring, which unfailingly maintains her reader’s engagement. This study offers a very welcome re-evaluation of exile as a linguistic, psychological, gendered, and existential site.’ — Trudy Agar, French Studies 69.4, October 2015, 560-61
- ‘The originality and importance of this study in the field of Comparative Literature lies in the fact not only that it analyses exiled women writers (instead of exiled men writers) but also that these writers’ homelands are different, making the research findings more valid as they are extremely representative of women who write away from their birth countries... Averis’ analysis is extremely comprehensive, clearly exposed and well supported with a solid and respected bibliography.’ — Verónica Añover, Modern and Contemporary France 23.3, 2015, 410-11
- ‘This book draws a new and original path within the analysis of contemporary women’s exilic writing and the nomadic configuration of identity. Not only does it develop key notions of exile and women’s writing, applying them to illustrative cases, it also articulates connections that overturn preconceived arguments, such as the exilic stereotyped figures still in use in Euro-American theorizations, or the negative connotations of exile, which are replaced by the idea of exile as a productive and creative site in which more fluid identities are rebuilt.’ — Marianna Deganutti, OCCT Review online, October 2015
Published March 2015
Samuel Butler against the Professionals: Rethinking Lamarckism 1860–1900
David Gillott
Studies In Comparative Literature 32
- ‘Gillott’s book provides a convincing and well-structured analysis of the work of the novelist, art historian and amateur scientist Samuel Butler in the late nineteenth-century British context, focus- ing in particular on his research on art and literature.’ — Cristiano Turbil, British Journal for the History of Science 49.2, 2006, 300-01
Byron, Shelley, and Goethe’s Faust: An Epic Connection
Ben Hewitt
Studies In Comparative Literature 33
- ‘This is not the first study of the relationship of Goethe's Faust to English Romantic writing, but it is an original contribution in its own right by virtue of the particular texts it focuses on and the wide-ranging, complex picture that emerges... the material is carefully assembled, and the twists and turns of the discussion are full of valuable insights.’ — David Hill, British Association for Romantic Studies Review 47, 2016, 32
- ‘Hewitt’s study is a thoughtful and fascinating discussion of the complex interconnections between the three authors... this thoughtful and knowledgeable study which successfully brings together a wealth of theories and innovative ideas.’ — Dagmar Paulus, Comparative Critical Studies 13.3, October 2016, 397-400
- ‘Hewitt’s approach to the relationship between these three writers is certainly speculative, not least about what Byron and Shelley knew of Faust I and how they read it. But its speculations are interesting and persuasive, and allow Hewitt to achieve something exciting and original: a comparative study of ‘similar aspects’ in the work of three major Romantic-period thinkers that has ‘nothing to do with the palpable influence of one writer upon another’ but does have ‘real significance for our understanding’ of the international ‘Romantic heritage’ handed down to our own time and especially its ‘struggle for the soul [...] not just of a modernity emergent, as it was, during our writers’ lifetimes, but of our modern world also’.’ — Alan Rawes, The Byron Journal 45.1, 2017, 97-99
- ‘A wide-ranging and stimulating account of Anglo-German Romantic literary exchange... Hewitt’s study generates a number of perceptive readings that shed new light on its primary texts. Covering an epic range of topics itself, Byron, Shelley, and Goethe’s ‘Faust’ demonstrates the potential of an approach that, taking the idea of influence as its point of departure, uses a more ‘conjectural’ or ‘suggestive’ (1) method to read texts comparatively and thus discover ‘epic connections’ where none were seen before.’ — Tim Sommer, Romanticism 23.2, July 2017, 196-98
Published July 2015
Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum: The Truth of Masks
Giles Whiteley
Studies In Comparative Literature 35
- ‘The strength of this study for the reader of Wilde is the way in which Whiteley seeks to connect Wilde’s theoretical writings with his fictions. This is central to its Deleuzian approach, its ‘active refusal of the critical either-or’, its determination to find the complementarity between Wilde the ‘producer of concepts’ and Wilde the producer of ‘percepts and affects’ (p. 24)... there is intellectual provocation at every turn, and difficulty to be celebrated.’ — Anne Varty, The OScholars April 2017
- ‘Giles Whiteley’s provocative monograph announces a reading of Wilde ‘through Deleuze and postmodern philosophical commentary on the simulacrum’. It also signals a challenge to ‘recent neo-historicist readings’ which ‘limit [Wilde’s] irruptive power’. Drawn to Deleuze’s notions of ‘disjunctive synthesis’, Whiteley emphasizes Wilde’s credentials as a ‘serious’ thinker, presenting him as a fusion of philosopher and artist. Where many recent critics have been at pains to place him in a precise historical and cultural context, Whiteley maintains that Wilde’s ‘contemporaries’ are properly determined by his intellectual outlook, and are therefore drawn from his past (Plato, Aristotle, Hegel), present (Arnold, Ruskin, Baudelaire, Nietzsche), and future (Deleuze, Blanchot, Foucault, and Klossowski, among others).’ — Nick Freeman, Modern Language Review 116.2, April 2017, 499-500 (full text online)
- ‘From the point of view of presentation, the volume is of the highest standard... Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum is, in my opinion, an important contribution to Wilde studies in at least two respects. Firstly, it pertinently resituates Wilde’s works within the intellectual context in which they were conceived and convincingly challenges the idea according to which Wilde’s philosophy of art is simply a derivative, Platonic and Hegelian, idealism. Secondly, it stages a large number of fruitful encounters between Wilde’s texts and contemporary theory, thereby taking much further Richard Ellmann’s intuition that Wilde was ‘one of us’ and shedding new light on the Irishman’s literary production. Oscar Wilde and the Simulacrum is itself a Deleuzian event, creating ‘lines of flight’ and causing renewed delight in the reader’s apprehension of Wilde’s shimmering surfaces.’ — Xavier Giudicelli, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 85, Spring 2017
Published September 2015
Leopardi and Shelley: Discovery, Translation and Reception
Daniela Cerimonia
Studies In Comparative Literature 34
Published September 2016
Translating Myth
Edited by Ben Pestell, Pietra Palazzolo and Leon Burnett
Studies In Comparative Literature 37
Published December 2016
The Rhetoric of Exile: Duress and the Imagining of Force
Vladimir Zorić
Studies In Comparative Literature 39
- ‘Since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise and down to the exodus of Jews from Germany triggered by Kristallnacht, followed most recently by the flight of millions from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, exile has constituted a basic experience of human history and myth, summoning forth a library of commentary... Zorić has taken a rich and fascinating topic and exposed it fruitfully to various theoretical analyses.’ — Theodore Ziolkowski, Modern Language Review 113.2, April 2018, 363-64 (full text online)
- ‘The book has something of the virtues of classical philology, such as erudition and close reading of the overall European literary tradition in original languages. It is equally commendable for widening its scope to the literary depictions of exilic experience in often overlooked East and Central European literatures, thus escaping the rather common fault of essentially reducing European intellectual and imaginative experiences to its Western parts.’ — Aleksandar Pavlović, European History Quarterly 48.2, 402-03
Published February 2017
Reflections in the Library: Selected Literary Essays 1926–1944
Antal Szerb
Studies In Comparative Literature 46
- ‘Skillfully translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood, edited with utmost circumspection by Zsuzsanna Varga, provided with a magisterial Introduction by Ágnes Péter and a foreword by Galin Tihanov, reveals much about its author, the novelist, scholar, and man of letters Antal Szerb and his mindset... Reflections in the Library can be seen, among its other achievements, as a gesture of proclaiming, now to the English-speaking world, the lasting relevance of Szerb’s legacy... Although Szerb’s life’s work was left unfinished, his contribution to the art of the essay is large and remarkable enough to merit a sequel.’ — Ákos Farkas, Hungarian Cultural Studies 10, 2017 (full text online)
- ‘This is a beautifully produced and judiciously edited selection of essays by a major writer from early-twentieth-century Hungary... All of the essays reveal Szerb’s sparkling wit and humour as well as his acumen: describing Chesterton as a great scholar and sophisticated clown, he prophecies that Shaw’s work will outlive Chesterton’s, while his essays on Gogol and Proust equally overflow with aphoristic wit. It is a must-have volume both for critics and general readers: beautiful, touching, and remarkably up-to-date prose on nineteenth-century European literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.1, January 2019, 119-20
Published September 2017
Sublime Conclusions: Last Man Narratives from Apocalypse to Death of God
Robert K. Weninger
Studies In Comparative Literature 43
- unsigned notice, The Year's Work in English Studies 98.1, 2019, 657-58
Published February 2018
The Modern Culture of Reginald Farrer: Landscape, Literature and Buddhism
Michael Charlesworth
Studies In Comparative Literature 36
- ‘The clear strengths of this book are in its lucid prose, historical accuracy, and truly fascinating subject matter... Richly supported in terms of diverse textual materials, the book is also visually stunning and contains a number of wonderful illustrations, photographs, and reproduced artworks... Charlesworth’s book presents a compelling case for a renewed interest in Reginald Farrer’s writings, and will remain the definitive work on this topic for many years to come.’ — Jeffrey Mather, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 164-65 (full text online)
Published May 2018
Arthur Symons: Poet, Critic, Vagabond
Edited by Elisa Bizzotto and Stefano Evangelista
Studies In Comparative Literature 44
- ‘The MHRA's recent commitment to publishing works by or on Arthur Symons was sus=tained in 2017 with selections edited by Nicholas Freeman and by Jane Desmarais and Chris Baldick. That commitment continues with a volume of essays on Symons’s life and work, many of which discuss his personal, intellectual, and artistic relations with aspects of European culture... In their short but excellent introduction, Bizzotto and Evangelista argue that their collection, “the first ... entirely dedicated to Symons[,] ... aims to project a new, nuanced view of Symons into the twenty-first century.”’ — Ian Small, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 62.3, 2019, 599-606
- ‘Once consecrated by Pater as a successor to Browning, Symons ranged far beyond poetry to practise literary and art criticism, aesthetic theory, drama, travel writing and translation; and he wrote prolifically, if self-cannibalistically, until his death in 1945.’ — Ellen Crowell, Times Literary Supplement 7 June 2019, 35
- ‘A book devoted to the work of Arthur Symons is timely and much needed; and this carefully fashioned and integrated collection of essays offers an excellent response to that need... This is a well-crafted collection; a thoughtful and integrated multi- authored study of a writer, and one that has been put together both to confirm his significance to many of our current scholarly preoccupations while simultaneously unsettling what it might mean to think of a writer as ‘central’ to any of those debates.’ — Marion Thain, Comparative Critical Studies 17.1, 2020, 161-64 (full text online)
- ‘The book is clearly a timely contribution to our knowledge of Symons and represents a significant milestone in his ongoing critical retrieval.’ — Rob Harris, Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism 5, 2020, 140-44
- ‘Gives Symons the meticulous attention that such a pivotal cultural figure deserves. One of the most insightful aspects... is its analysis of the wandering obliqueness of his Decadent perspective as it reflects his philosophical commitment to freedom of expression, experience, and lifestyle.’ — Dennis Denisoff, Victorian Studies 62.4, 2020, 686-88 (full text online)
Published August 2018
Utopian Identities: A Cognitive Approach to Literary Competitions
Clementina Osti
Studies In Comparative Literature 41
Published April 2019
A Modernist in Exile: The International Reception of H. G. Adler (1910-1988)
Edited by Lynn L. Wolff
Studies In Comparative Literature 42
- ‘A very impressive collection of moving and thought-provoking essays... Because the contributors to this book have such detailed and specialized knowledge of H. G.’s life and work, and such a masterly ability to contextualize his wide-ranging achievement and relate their new work to earlier critical work, they set a new standard in Adler scholarship. Consequently this fascinating volume will doubtless enhance H. G.’s reputation both as an intellectual and as a writer of prose fiction, and become necessary reading for anyone who has any kind of interest in him and his work.’ — Richard Sheppard, Journal of European Studies 50.3, Autumn 2020, 295–301 (full text online)
- ‘This volume dedicated to H.G. Adler will prove edifying to seasoned scholars and newcomers alike... In contrast to Adorno, who - similar to many postmodernists - collapses traditions of value into barbarity and admits no distinction between the two, Adler struggles to maintain, describe, and explain the possibility of human goodness in the face of overwhelming evil. It is certainly true for Adler that in the world of the camps much, if not most, of the ability for ethical action was destroyed - but not all. And since this is true, Adler’s work challenges his readers to face the truth in its entirety and to define the scale of human value they will adhere to in the face of barbarity.’ — Traci S. O’Brien, Monatshefte 112.4, Winter 2020, 747-50
Depicting the Divine: Mikhail Bulgakov and Thomas Mann
Olga G. Voronina
Studies In Comparative Literature 47
- ‘Olga G. Voronina’s careful comparative study brings to light many of the parallel narrative strategies in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers... What sets Bulgakov and Mann apart from the mainstream, as Voronina convincingly shows, is their decision to engage polemically with biblical texts.’ — Thomas Seifrid, Comparative Literature Studies 57.3, 2020, 559-62
- ‘В заключение хочу сказать, что книга Ольги Ворониной инновативна в постановке исследовательской проблемы и плодотворна в ее решении. Завершаю рецензию на книгу цитатой из другого булгаковского романа: «Она дышит! Она живет!».’ — Irina Belobrovtseva, Scando-Slavica 67.2, 2021, 287-94 (full text online)
- ‘Voronina has created a convincing, far-researching, unique and engaging study of Bulgakov's and Mann's poetic versions of biblical narratives, which both de- and re-mythologize the source text and are characterized by syncretism and rich intertextuality. The book is undoubtedly interesting and inspiring not only for Slavic and German scholars but also for any reader who is interested in a different and innovative approach to the study of comparative literature. The spiritual, scientific, and scholarly merits of this book perfectly complement one another.’ — Natalia Kaloh Vid, Slavic Review full text online)
- ‘The first comparative study of The Master and Margarita and Joseph and His Brothers, and an important and original contribution to research on Bulgakov’s and Mann’s novels as well as on biblical literature in more general terms.’ — Sarah Fengler, Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation 30 September 2021
- ‘Depicting the Divine is a meticulously researched, impressive close reading of two novels... a valuable contribution to literary studies. In her nuanced close readings and thorough research of the two novels Voronina applies a specialist’s insight to both Bulgakov and Mann, paying attention to linguistic subtleties in the two languages and explaining them well to the English reader.’ — Eric Laursen, Russian Review 80.4, October 2021, 713-14 (full text online)
Death Sentences: Literature and State Killing
Edited by Birte Christ and Ève Morisi
Studies In Comparative Literature 49
Scenographies of Perception: Sensuousness in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, and Proust
Christian Jany
Studies In Comparative Literature 45
- ‘Christian Jany’s Scenographies of Perception situates itself on well-traversed philosophical territory, but with a freshness unusual in a volume devoted to longstanding issues in the history of philosophy and theories of poetry and literature... A thought-provoking, cross-disciplinary account of the relationship between thought and perception that ought to appeal to students of German idealism and ro- manticism and their aftermath in the 20th century, and in a way that stays admirably close to the relevant texts and the concerns that animate them.’ — James D. Reid, Monatshefte 112.3, 2020, 555-57
Published September 2019
Comparative Literature in Britain: National Identities, Transnational Dynamics 1800-2000
Joep Leerssen
Studies In Comparative Literature 27
- ‘This is a study of the rare kind of which it can truthfully be said that it is definitive: the description fits Leerssen’s book perfectly. To those still living who launched comparative literature in the new universities some 50 years ago it will come as a happy reminder of an exciting time of innovation and change which they were fortunate to have been part of. To those of a later generation it will reveal that what happened in the 1960s did not emerge from nowhere: a long and honourable history, ably explored by Professor Leerssen, led up to it.’ — John Fletcher, Journal of European Studies 50.3, 2020, 302-321 (full text online)
- ‘The publication of [this book] is welcome news... The entire section on the nineteenth century is a treasure house of insights into cross-national and comparative ways of approaching knowledge... This is, all in all, a book to be heartily recommended for a wide variety of readers interested in comparative studies in the humanities and social sciences, while being of particular interest to those wishing to understand the evolution of literary and cultural studies.’ — Barnita Bagchi, History of Humanities Fall 2020, 554-56
Published September 2020
Samuel Butler and the Science of the Mind: Evolution, Heredity and Unconscious Memory
Cristiano Turbil
Studies In Comparative Literature 48
Metaphor in European Philosophy after Nietzsche: An Intellectual History
Andrew Hines
Studies In Comparative Literature 54
- ‘This monograph is exactly as its title would suggest: a lively intellectual history of metaphor in (mostly) twentieth-century European philosophy... does the impossible, succeeding very clearly in defining and outlining the history of metaphor (which [Hines] does comprehensively and deeply, I might add).’ — Christopher O’Hara, Forum for Modern Language Studies 58.1, January 2022, 127-28 (full text online)
- ‘Throughout the book, [Hines] suggests that studying the metaphors of ideologies would be an apt use case — he cites examples from The Language of the Third Reich, Victor Klemperer’s study of Third Reich rhetoric — yet he can only hint at how exactly this is to be done. As a historical result, Hines has produced an excellent overview over the development of metaphor theory, and has assembled a canon whose surprising star, Hans Blumenberg, is also still the least known in the Anglosphere. Not everyone will agree with this selection — nor with the pivotal position Nietzsche has in it — but for any future study of metaphor theories, this book will be indispensable.’ — Hannes Bajohr, Contributions to the History of Concepts 17.2, Winter 2022, 123–27 (full text online)
Mary Shelley and Europe: Essays in Honour of Jean de Palacio
Edited by Antonella Braida
Studies In Comparative Literature 55
- ‘A wonderful selection of essays which discusses an aspect of Mary Shelley’s life that was so important to her art and yet is perhaps under-emphasised in discussing her work.’ — Jacqueline Mulhallen, Women's Writing 6 March 2022
Published July 2021
Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination
Elisa Segnini
Studies In Comparative Literature 56
- ‘The wide-ranging approach of the book, which also engages with recent debates in decadence and early modernist studies, openly challenges the “abrupt separation between authors associated with the ‘half-mock interlude of decadence’ and those considered exponents of symbolism, and thus part of early modernism”... The author keeps steady command of her arguments while navigating and scrutinising several artifacts from different cultures, though of course each case study shows its own fine tuning.’ — Giulio Milone, Synergies 2, 2021, 65-68 (full text online)
- ‘Elisa Segnini leads her readers on a journey through fin-de-siècle Europe with one extra stop in Japan. The universe unveiled by Segnini is populated by uncanny mask makers, men in drag, grotesque masquerades, deathly plaster casts, gruesome masks of exceptional men, criminals, and deviants... A distinctive contribution to a field that can only benefit from engaging with the anthropological, medical, and legal discourse that underlies the artistic production of the fin de siècle.’ — Alessandra Crotti, Rivista di studi vittoriani 53, 2022, 121-25