A Captive of the Dawn: The Life and Work of Peretz Markish (1895-1952)
Edited by Joseph Sherman, Gennady Estraikh, Jordan Finkin and David Shneer
Studies In Yiddish 9•25 March 2011
- ‘This volume is not only the best study of Markish’s career available in English — it is the only one. And yet, one could not hope for a better treatment of its worthy subject... Given Markish’s signiicance to the development of Yiddish literature in Poland as well as the Soviet Union, there is no doubt that any scholar of Yiddish will consult these essays frequently and gratefully.’ — Marc Caplan, Slavonic and East European Review 92.2, April 2014, 321-23 (full text online)
Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture's Appropriation of a Baroque Genius
Laura Rorato
Italian Perspectives 30•1 November 2014
Catalan Narrative 1875-2015
Edited by Jordi Larios and Montserrat Lunati
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 16•28 September 2020
- ‘Two attractive features of the volume are its richness and the way it brings to life the wide variety of works analysed. Critical theory figures strongly in a number of the articles, but it is employed carefully and sometimes subtly as a framework that enhances rather than obscures the narrative texts under discussion. Finally, the editors’ succinct Introduction intelligently, clearly, and deftly ties together the diverse strands of the book’s eclectic content, inviting the casual reader to explore further.’ — David George, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 514-15 (full text online)
The Cervantean Heritage: Reception and Influence of Cervantes in Britain
Edited by J. A. G. Ardila
Legenda (General Series) •23 December 2008
- ‘Resulta reconfortante para cualquier investigador interesado en los textos de Miguel de Cervantes comprobar que, tras la explosión de estudios surgidos en torno a las celebraciones del año 2005, cuarto centenario de la publicación del Quijote, el cervantismo está más vivo que nunca. De hecho, es precisamente ahora, tras el paso del ciclón de publicaciones que trajo consigo dicho aniversario, cuando surge la oportunidad de realizar análisis nacidos más al calor de la curiosidad real y el rigor y menos de la oportunidad o el oportunismo. Este libro supone una muy valiosa aportación para el campo de los estudios cervantinos pero también para el estudio de la literatura británica, y especialistas de ambos campos encontrarán en él material ineludible y original con el que ganar en conocimiento y sobre todo, una herramienta con la que continuar avanzando en el no siempre bien conocido ni estudiado campo de las relaciones literarias y culturales hispano-británicas.’ — Ana M. Rodríguez-Rodríguez, Iberoamericana IX.36, 2009, 189-91
- ‘Rather than emanating from the Cervantesmania that has informed most of the book-length studies on Cervantes's influence on English-speaking writers [since the 2005 anniversary year], the present volume benefits from the fact that its contributors come from among the pre-2005 generation of critics, who have drawn on their experience of digging out Cervantes's actual influence on British literature.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 47.1, January 2011
Character, Ideology, and Symbolism in the Plays of Wedekind, Sternheim, Kaiser, Toller, and Brecht
M. Helena Gonçalves da Silva
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 21•1 January 1985
Chicago of the Balkans: Budapest in Hungarian Literature 1900-1939
Gwen Jones
Legenda (General Series) •4 March 2013
- ‘Based on a historical contextualization of the social background of writers and the ideological debates of the time, a good knowledge of the secondary literature, a detailed discussion of the content and plots of relevant literary works and ample quotations in Hungarian (consistently translated in English) from a representative sample of novels and short stories, Jones’s book is a social history of Budapest literature.’ — Alexander Vari, Slavonic and East European Review 93.2, April 2015, 352-55 (full text online)
Childhood as Memory, Myth and Metaphor: Proust, Beckett, and Bourgeois
Catherine Crimp
Legenda (General Series) •21 December 2012
- ‘Challenging and original, this is a study that will appeal not just to specialists of these three creative figures but also to everyone interested in narrative, metaphors, and the ways in which the image of the child simultaneously enables and challenges creativity.’ — Rosemary Lloyd, French Studies 67.4, October 2013, 584-85
- ‘The study is informed by a wide array of philosophical and theoretical points of reference and relies especially on Maurice Blanchot’s writing to make a convincing case for the importance of childhood in the oeuvres of Proust, Beckett and Bourgeois.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.4, October 2014, 504
Childhood, Memory, and the Nation: Young Lives under Nazism in Contemporary German Culture
Alexandra Lloyd
Germanic Literatures 23•28 September 2020
Children and Yiddish Literature: From Early Modernity to Post-Modernity
Edited by Gennady Estraikh, Kerstin Hoge and Mikhail Krutikov
Studies In Yiddish 14•1 September 2016
Children in Literature
Edited by Karin Lesnik-Oberstein
Yearbook of English Studies 32•1 January 2002
The Choreography of Modernism in France: La Danseuse, 1830-1930
Julie Townsend
Research Monographs in French Studies 28•12 April 2010
- ‘An engaging and concise chronology of modernism through dance, with the danseuse constituting the correlation between performing, visual, and literary modernisms.’ — Paul Ryan, French Studies 65.4, 2011, 545-46
Classical Rhetoric and the German Poet: 1620 to the Present
Anna Carrdus
Legenda (General Series) •1 January 1997
- ‘The tone is confident, the style lucid. Within a few pages the reader senses how purposeful the exposition is, and how well thought out. But what makes Anna Carrdus's performance so assured is her obvious commitment to poetry itself... It concludes with a wish that may sound audacious, yet which the undertaking wholly justifies: 'My findings will, I hope, open up an opportunity for scholarship to revise current perceptions of the history of German poetry.' She has already revised them herself, single-handed.’ — Peter Skrine, Modern Language Review 94.1, 1999, 243-5 (full text online)
- ‘Die Analysen sind treffich, und die Er≥rterungen zum literarhistorischen und poetologischen Kontext zeugen von groôer Kennerschaft.’ — Joachim Knape, Germanistik 41.2, 2000, 419
Cognitive Confusions: Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture
Edited by Ita Mac Carthy, Kirsti Sellevold and Olivia Smith
Legenda (General Series) •13 February 2017
- ‘Cognition-centered scholarship is here, and Dreams, Delusions and Illusions in Early Modern Culture is a welcome new contribution... I found myself wanting to dialogue with each of these writers... they enter into essential new investigations into the diversity of our cognitive experiences.’ — Donald Beecher, Renaissance Quarterly 71.1, 2018, 267-69
- ‘Sustained and intensive collaboration is evident in the collection, where every chapter displays a profound and fruitful engagement with cognitive psychology and philosophy that illuminates both early modern literary texts and contemporary science... These essays are thought-provoking, rigorous, and inventive themselves, and as exemplary models of properly collaborative research should interest early modernists, literary scholars, and other researchers into cognition.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 54.3, July 2018, 372
Colonial Austria: Austria and the Overseas
Edited by Jon Hughes and Florian Krobb
Austrian Studies 20•14 January 2013
Comparative Encounters between Artaud, Michaux and the Zhuangzi: Rationality, Cosmology and Ethics
Xiaofan Amy Li
Transcript 4•1 July 2015
- ‘This intelligent book raises important issues about comparative literature at its most challenging... All three thinkers are concerned with expression and performativity rather than with self-justification. The justification of this three-part comparison is clearly in the fluidity of thinking and its non-limitation.’ — Mary Ann Caws, French Studies 70.2, April 2016, 278-79
- ‘The philosophical, rather than literary approach undertaken here offers valuable and well-founded insights into enduring modes of thought and existence.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.4, October 2016, 473-74
Comparative Literature in Britain: National Identities, Transnational Dynamics 1800-2000
Joep Leerssen
Studies In Comparative Literature 27•23 September 2019
- ‘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
Conceptions of the Absurd: From Surrealism to Chestov's and Fondane's Existential Thought
Ramona Fotiade
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2001
- ‘Fotiade argues persuasively that the ideas of Chestov and Fondane form the basis of a tradition of dissident thought in the 1920s and beyond... an original and illuminating contribution to French intellectual history, a clearly organized and closely argued exploration of a neglected field.’ — Douglas Smith, French Studies LVII.3, 2003, 414-15
The Correspondence of Edward Gordon Craig and Count Harry Kessler, 1903-1937
Edited by L. M. Newman
Bithell Series of Dissertations 21 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 43•1 January 1995
Cortázar and Music
Nicholas Roberts
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 25•30 December 2019
- ‘Alongside literature and politics, music is an inescapable presence in the work of Julio Cortázar. In this thorough and wide-ranging study, Nicholas Roberts provides a detailed analysis of the myriad ways in which music appears in the novels, short stories, and critical work of the Argentine. In the process, he reveals that music was no mere leitmotiv, but rather provided the structural tools for key works.’ — Ben Bollig, Modern Language Review 116.4, October 2021, 671-72 (full text online)
- ‘Es un libro que invita a sus lectores a reencontrarse con las obras de Cortázar, pero al mismo tiempo nos inspira a perseguir una serie de preguntas más generales sobre la presencia de la música en la literatura moderna.’ — Matt Johnson, Revista Iberoamericana 87.276, July-September 2021, 952-54
Critical Fictions: Nerval's Les Illuminés
Meryl Tyers
Research Monographs in French Studies 3•2 December 1999
- ‘These six mavericks reflect aspects of Nerval himself, who thus becomes the implicit seventh in the series... Tyers's writing is as lively as it is bedazzling.’ — Roger Cardinal, Modern Language Review 96.1, 2001, 195-6 (full text online)
- ‘As Meryl Tyers argues throughout this monograph, Nerval's Les Illuminés is one of his most intriguing but also most neglected works... Tyers examines the author's textual folie, an imaginary library in which the self loses itself.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 37.1, 2001, 115
- ‘On retiendra aussi une hypothèse intéressante - et neuve, semblable-t-il - sur les sens du titre, Les Illuminés, que l'on peut rapprocher des 'livres illuminés', c'est-a-dire orné d'illuminations, ou d'enluminures.’ — Michel Brix, Studi francesi 130.1, 2000, 189
A Cultural Citizen of the World: Sigmund Freud's Knowledge and Use of British and American Writings
S. S. Prawer
Legenda (General Series) •17 July 2009
- ‘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 Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano
Edited by Xon de Ros and Daniela Omlor
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 24•3 April 2017
- ‘Tal y como promete su tîtulo, este monográfico le ofrece al lector una visión de conjunto del legado cultural de María Zambrano. Un elenco multidisciplinar e internacional de colaboradores se reúnen en esta publicacíon para, gracias a la cuidadosa labor de selección y edición de Xon de Ros y Daniela Omlor, proporcionar una contextualización de la extensa producción zambraniana en relación a las principales corrientes del pensamiento occidental contemporáneo.’ — Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, Revista de Hispanismo Filosófico 23, 2019, 226-28
- ‘Pioneras en su contexto... Coronan el volumen una bibliografía y un índex, dando cuenta de la vigencia del pensamiento de María Zambrano en distintas ramas del saber como la filosofía, la poesía, las artes plásticas o la política.’ — Carmen María López López, Las Torres de Lucca 12, January-June 2018, 285-92
- ‘An important contribution to Zambrano’s bibliography... focuses on Zambrano’s role as a cultural agent, looking at her impact in the following areas: avant-garde, feminism, psycho-analysis, literary comparativism, art criticism and semiotics, autobiographical writing, political theory, historical memory and exile.’ — Pilar Molina, The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies 70, 2018, 284 (full text online)
- ‘Serious and sustained academic attention in the Anglophone world is in its infancy. The Cultural Legacy of María Zambrano takes on a pioneering role by being among the first book-length studies aimed at an English-speaking readership... A coherent and rigorous body of research, inviting the reader to reassess the impact of Zambrano’s legacy alongside her place in Western intellectual history.’ — Beatriz Caballero Rodríguez, Modern Language Review 115.1, 2020, 195-96 (full text online)
Culture and Politics in Red Vienna
Edited by Judith Beniston and Robert Vilain
Austrian Studies 14•1 November 2006
Cultures at War: Austria-Hungary 1914–1918
Edited by Judith Beniston and Deborah Holmes
Austrian Studies 21•1 January 2014
Dada as Text, Thought and Theory
Stephen Forcer
Research Monographs in French Studies 39•22 July 2015
- ‘Stephen Forcer’s original, timely and impeccably researched monograph is an adventurous and therefore provocative attempt to combine close readings of verbal and visual Dada texts with an imaginative analytical conspectus of the ‘rich inner life’ of the Paris Lodge... Dada wisdom is finally reaching a large audience, both inside and outside universities, during a dürtiger Zeit when that unconventional commodity is becoming more behovely than ever.’ — Richard Sheppard, Journal of European Studies 46.1, 74-75
- ‘This cogent and wide-ranging study... challenges the reader to reassess Dada as a far from simplistic phenomenon exerting a radical influence on contemporary culture.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.2, 2016, 235
- ‘A perceptive reappraisal of the movement... Forcer’s study uncovers convincingly, through a close and sensitive study of diverse intersections, the semantic plurality and allusive density of Dada texts; and thus confirms his conclusion that, even when meaning appears to collapse, it ‘inevitably re-emerges, playfully and gloriously’.’ — Elza Adamowicz, Modern Language Review 111.4, October 2016, 1139-40 (full text online)
- ‘This is a lively, incisive, and thought-provoking book substantially based on original archive work, which injects new and proliferating life into the study of Dada... With excellent English translations of quotations throughout, and well-chosen monochrome illustrations, the book is fully accessible to non-francophone readers and is an absolute must for anyone with a serious interest in Dada.’ — Andrew Rothwell, French Studies 71.1, Winter 2017, 133-34