Published March 2024

The Integrity of the Avant-Garde: Karel Teige and the Biography of an Ambition
Peter Zusi 
Visual Culture 2

Published October 2022

For the Love of Art
Peter Dayan
Selected Essays 10

  • ‘Rich and powerful discussions, bursting with invention and life. This is a formidably clever sequence of essays in which major writers and musicians are set in contrast and dialogue with each other.’ — John Batchelor, Modern Language Review 119.2, 2024, 181-88 (full text online)

Published September 2022

The Experience of Colour in Lorca's Theatre
Jade Boyd
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 54

  • ‘Boyd is sensitive to what is left out as well as what is explicit. She thus underlines the absence in this tragedy of stage directions regarding lighting. She also reads ‘verbal colour’ into objects, food and animals, so the mention of frogs, chocolate, earth, fire and goldfinches becomes part of an imagined canvas of images, sometimes as potent as what we can see on stage.’ — John London, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 100.6, 2023, 930-32 (full text online)

Published June 2022

Residual Figuration in Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti
Lin Li
Studies In Comparative Literature 53

  • ‘In this ambitious yet focused study of the relationship between certain formal characteristics in Samuel Beckett’s dramatic works and Alberto Giacometti’s art, Lin Li not only clarifies these two artists’ shared milieu, but also sheds light on new ways to understand both subjecthood and reading more generally.’ — Charlie Clements, Modern Language Review 2024, 119.1, 139-41 (full text online)

Zola's Painters
Robert Lethbridge
Research Monographs in French Studies 68

  • ‘In Zola’s Painters, Lethbridge has condensed a detailed textual history of art criticism that ran through the novels and the hundreds of articles that constituted the literary and intellectual agenda Zola pursued. He has mastered the vast scholarship on the major artists, writers, and cultural figures of Zola’s times to provide a comprehensively informed analysis of the critical lens through which the writer viewed his contemporaries’ productions... His rigorous archival and textual investigation combines with an admirable ability to write clearly and convincingly about the complex aesthetic, social, political, and economic interchanges of the second half of nineteenth-century France.’ — Therese Dolan, Nineteenth-Century French Studies 51.3-4, Spring 2023
  • ‘Dans cette étude richement illustrée, où, parmi beaucoup d'autres, les reproductions des tableaux de Corot, Monet et Véronèse accompagnent et prolongent la perspective du texte, la démonstration s'emploie à décomposer le regard et le goût d'un écrivain qui, précisément, compose avec la peinture et ses maîtres : de portraits en paysages, de critiques en repentirs, à rebours de l'idée reçue d'un romancier à la culture visuelle limitée, insensible aux subtilités et aux techniques picturales, et écrivant lui-même au couteau voire à la truelle, se dessine sous la plume de Robert Lethbridge la figure d'un Zola fin connaisseur et amateur des arts, observateur attentif de l'expression et des délicatesses du tempérament artiste d'hier et d'aujourd'hui.’ — Marion Glaumaud-Carbonnier, Les Cahiers naturalistes 97, September 2023, 347-350
  • ‘Zola’s importance as an art critic – his energetic commitment to naturalism as well as his detection of recidivism, his instinctive alliance with artists whose capacities he felt echoed his own – is forcefully assessed in this dense and valuable study.’ — Richard Thomson, Burlington Magazine 165, September 2023, 1042-43
  • ‘Robert Lethbridge’s outstanding study of Zola’s painters brings together the many strands of the naturalist author’s complex engagement with the art and artists of the late nineteenth century. This compelling and persuasive narrative maps the politi- cal and aesthetic valences of the perennial dialogues, disputes, dramas, and doubts between Zola and his (erstwhile) friends, Cézanne, Manet, Monet, and others in the Impressionist circle.’ — Alexandra K. Wettlaufer, French Studies 2023 (full text online)
  • ‘Zola’s Painters offers an excellent example of why scholarly work on the nineteenth century is so important: the myths and half-truths, as well as the political, social, and personal complexities which shaped the art and literature of the period and their reception, need to be fully interrogated, even if we are left with more intriguing questions than satisfying answers.’ — Claire Moran, Modern Language Review 118.4, October 2023, 624-25 (full text online)

Published February 2022

Diego Rivera and Juan Rulfo: Post-Revolutionary Body Politics 1922-1965
Lucy O’Sullivan
Visual Culture 3

Published December 2021

A Poetics of the Image: Paul Celan and André du Bouchet
Julian J. I. Koch
Studies In Comparative Literature 52

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

Published September 2019

Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling
Jo Labanyi
Selected Essays 11

  • ‘There is much in this book to celebrate—multiple topics, angles, issues and theories addressed in order to focus us on ‘ways of thinking about Spanish culture’, where ‘culture’ means literature, cinema, painting and photography, with (perhaps) history, historical memory, feminism, gender, race, nation formation, modernity and politics added to the mix.... Some of these essays are already classic studies that have influenced the way we think about certain literary periods or texts. Labanyi combines theory with specificity, details from the works studied inserted (or viewed through) various theoretical constructs. She claims to search for ‘moments of contradiction or incoherence’ in literature that often point to ‘something important’ (6), a claim fully realized in this book.’ — David T. Gies, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 98.3, 2021, 485-87
  • ‘The essays in Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present are suggestive in their individual approaches; the book as a whole is nevertheless unique as a window into the thought of one of the most influential scholars of Spanish culture in recent decades. Whether or not one always agrees with Labanyi, it is impossible not to be in awe of her mind and method, and how she has carried the profession forward.’ — Wadda C. Rios-Font, Studies in XXth and XXIst Century Literature 46.1, 2022
  • ‘Las páginas que abren el volumen son un brillante ejercicio de egohistoria donde Labanyi reflexiona tam- bién sobre la labor de re-archivo que acomete para este proyecto... Como Labanyi asevera desde las primeras páginas de Spanish Culture from Ro- manticism to the Present, lo que realmente cuenta son los momentos no esperados, de tensión, que el crítico logra desentrañar en el artefacto cultural objeto de estudio, “the contradictions and incoherence that, perhaps even more than areas of consensus, put us in touch with the pulse of the time” (4). Quizá sea este crucial precepto metodológico, aplicado de manera consistente a esta variedad de estudios realizados desde mediados de los noventa, adoptando diversos ángulos críticos y considerando distintos medios, lo que trasluce con mayor fuerza en Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present. Structures of Feeling: la tentativa generosa de motivarnos a releer a contracorriente para deshacer, o cuando menos problematizar, asunciones culturales que también atrav’ — Patricia López-Gay, Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 25, 2021, 310-12
  • ‘A key contribution to Spanish Cultural and Literary Studies. Running through the collection is the author’s attention to ‘structures of feeling’, drawing on Raymond Williams’s notion, as a driver and explanatory resource for the comprehension of a diverse array of cultural production primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.’ — Richard Cleminson, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 269-71 (full text online)

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 January 2018

Intellectual Life and Literature at Solovki 1923-1930: The Paris of the Northern Concentration Camps
Andrea Gullotta
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Small and remote as it is, Solovki has always been central to Russian culture. Nearly all the central themes of Russian history — the power and schisms of the Orthodox Church and its intimacy with the state; the development of the Gulag — are reflected, or more often anticipated, in its history... The legacy of the Terror remains a battlefield. Books as scrupulously researched as Gullotta’s are invaluable.’ — Robert Chandler, Financial Times 27 April 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s case study of the SLON camp serves as a model for studies of Gulag writing, and makes a bold statement in favor of a new, synthesizing discourse about Gulag literature... All students of Russian literature and of the human condition owe a debt to Andrea Gullotta, who has tread on virgin snow, following in no one’s footsteps.’ — Lydia Roberts, Los Angeles Review of Books 3 May 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s scholarly, in-depth but quite readable book primarily examines the content of the printed output of work from Solovki in the early period 1923-30 and also considers the circumstances of its production, including the constantly shifting and always ambivalent relations between prisoners and camp administration.’ — Trevor Pateman, Reading This Book Online, 2018
  • ‘Gullotta’s commendable study opens up a new area of Gulag research and adds considerably to our knowledge of the literature of the Soviet labour camps.’ — Sarah J. Young, Slavonic and East European Review 98.3, July 2020, 563-65 (full text online)
  • ‘An invaluable addition to a growing body of texts dedicated to understanding the multifaceted and complex cultural arena of Soviet labour camps. Gullotta effectively captures the uniqueness and plurality of the Solovki camp experience, preserving the many voices of the camp for future generations of historians and researchers.’ — Julie Draskoczy Zigoris, Modern Language Review 116.3, July 2021, 521-23 (full text online)

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

Futurism: A Microhistory
Edited by Sascha Bru, Luca Somigli, and Bart Van den Bossche
Italian Perspectives 36

  • ‘The chapter structure is cleverly designed to replicate a ‘day in the life’ of a Futurist ‘new man’, with chapters focusing on places both large and small from ‘The Skyscraper’ to ‘The Bed’... This book was a pleasure to read and will reward both the serious scholar of Futurism and the more casual reader of twentieth-century Italian culture who may wish to dip in and out of the Futurist day.’ — Selena Daly, Modern Language Review 114.3, July 2019, 577-579 (full text online)

Published August 2017

‘Noa Noa’ by Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice: With ‘Manuscrit tiré du “Livre des métiers” de Vehbi-Zumbul Zadi’ by Paul Gauguin
Edited by Claire Moran
Critical Texts 50

  • ‘Moran has given us not only a fine new edition of Noa Noa, but also a forceful reminder of the generic complexities that underpin artists' writings.’ — Richard Hobbs, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 450-51 (full text online)
  • ‘Moran’s introductory essay is itself a noteworthy piece of contemporary scholarship on Gauguin... her very thorough and carefully edited new version of Noa Noa add to our understanding of Gauguin as a writer, in particular, the way he used writing as a mode of self-representation, not merely as a backdrop for his visual art... This affordable text will be useful for scholars of fin de siècle French art and literature as well as students of French language, art history, and aesthetic theory, and will likely lead to new scholarship on Gauguin... I would invite others going forward to consult Moran’s edition of Noa Noa as the definitive text for any study of Gauguin.’ — Heather Waldroup, H-France 18.213, October 2018

Published May 2017

Decadence and the Senses
Edited by Jane Desmarais and Alice Condé
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘I found Maxwell’s discussion of the tuberose, and more speci cally Walter Pater’s conscription of that flower to describe his own rarefied prose style, to be particularly interesting, as Pater’s writing is so often considered the acme of Decadent prose. It seems that the orchid that famously reminded Dorian Gray of the seven deadly sins should, perhaps, have been a tuberose. Equally interesting is Angela Dunstan’s suggestion that Theodore Watts-Dunton’s roman-à-clef Aylwin became for readers a means of owning the celebrity of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, or the notion extended by Liz Renes that John Singer Sargent’s Madame X should be considered a meditation on the white, sculptural body and its changing role in modern art.’ — Jamie Horrocks, English Literature in Translation 61.4, 2018, 525-28
  • ‘It is perhaps fitting that the unity of a book on Decadent literature should be best experienced ‘decomposed’ to give place to the independence of each chapter. There is no doubt, however, that the high quality of its constituent parts forms a significant contribution to Sensory Studies and that the collection is a ‘must-read’ for any student of Decadence at the fin de siècle and beyond.’ — Patricia Pulham, Modern Language Review 114.1, January 2019, 128-29 (full text online)
  • ‘Desmarais and Condé have done an enormous service by opening up this can of repulsive worms.’ — Dennis Denisoff, Victorian Studies 61.2, Winter 2019, 554-56

Published December 2016

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

  • ‘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)

Published October 2015

Baudelaire and Photography: Finding the Painter of Modern Life
Timothy Raser
Research Monographs in French Studies 45

  • ‘Writing on the cusp of modernity, runs Raser’s overarching argument, Baudelaire is struggling to leave behind the traditional world, abandoning a search for beauty in a quest for a theory of modernity.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 52.4, October 2016, 476-77
  • ‘Highlights exciting aspects of Baudelaire’s work and illuminates his stance on modernity. One of Raser’s achievements is to take seriously the fact that Baudelaire transcended the boundaries between various arts and media. Exploring the relations between painting, poetry, engravings, and photography, he shows to what degree Baudelaire’s work is characterized by intertextual and intermedial tensions.’ — Marit Grøtta, Modern Language Review 112.1, January 2017, 254-56 (full text online)
  • ‘As always with Raser’s writing, this is an intelligently and cogently argued book. His deep knowledge of Baudelaire’s art criticism firmly grounds his arguments about aesthetic theory. Raser’s literary interpretations, such as that of Hugo’s poem, are interesting and thought-provoking... This slender and elegant book has set me to thinking about Baudelaire’s “aesthetics” of the modern as I read his works — it has given me a new perspective on his poetry.’ — Dorothy Kelly, H-France 16.125, July 2016

Published July 2015

Adapted Voices: Transpositions of Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit and Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro
Armelle Blin-Rolland
Transcript 2

  • ‘Overall, this study displays great skill in the handling of diverse materials across different media, proposing convincing readings of specific works and transpositions within a persuasive overall argument about the centrality of ‘voice’ to debates around adaptation.’ — Douglas Smith, Irish Journal of French Studies 16, 2016

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

Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater: Victorian Aestheticism, Doubt and Secularisation
Sara Lyons
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘As British aestheticism continues to enjoy a revival of interest, it becomes ever more urgent to reassess the metaphysical work that Pater and Swinburne have done for us in their search for a way beyond doubt. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater is a timely reminder of our intellectual inheritance from this moment of crisis in Western religion.’ — Orla Polten, Essays in Criticism 66.3, July 2016, 390-96
  • ‘Sara Lyons’s admirable monograph will prove a cornerstone in Victorian studies and will soon become invaluable to students and scholars alike working on 19th-century literature and culture.’ — Charlotte Ribeyrol, Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens 83, Printemps 2016
  • ‘Lyons’s rethinking of Swinburne’s and Pater’s relationship to religion is absolutely necessary in light of recent revisions of the secularization thesis. She productively complicates the oversimplified binary between belief and unbelief that still too often plagues our readings of Victorian literature, and provocatively asks us to rethink the reasons underlying the Aesthetic Movement’s embrace of an ‘art for art’s sake’ philosophy. Algernon Swinburne and Walter Pater should be read by scholars of aestheticism, nine- teenth-century religion, and Victorian literature more generally.’ — Dustin Friedman, Review of English Studies Advance Access 4 October 2016
  • ‘A valuable addition to scholarship on Swinburne, Pater and aestheticism.’ — Beth Newman, Victorian Studies 60.1, Autumn 2017, 126-28

Published March 2015

Louisa Waterford and John Ruskin: 'For you have not Falsely Praised'
Caroline Ings-Chambers
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘This book is a valuable revelation of a little-known figure. Lady Waterford is shown both to have been acutely sensitive to the cultural currents of her day and to have been a strong talent in her own right.’ — John Batchelor, Modern Language Review 111.4, October 2016, 1128-29 (full text online)
  • ‘Ings‐Chambers builds a strong case for reintegrating this artist in the wider Pre‐Raphaelite canon. Her writing makes Waterford’s art come across as essential thanks to its charm, vision and social/gender relevance.’ — Nic Peeters, Pre-Raphaelite Society Journal XXIII, 2015, 63-66

Published November 2014

Caravaggio in Film and Literature: Popular Culture's Appropriation of a Baroque Genius
Laura Rorato
Italian Perspectives 30

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 January 2012

Regarding Lost Time: Photography, Identity, and Affect in Proust, Benjamin, and Barthes
Katja Haustein
Legenda (General Series)

  • ‘Katja Haustein’s monograph charts new territory in the expanding study of autobiographical writing in the light of photography... this volume will no doubt be of great benefit to specialists of these three seminal authors, as well as to those working in comparative studies.’ — Kathrin Yacavone, French Studies 67.2 (April 2013), 271-72
  • ‘Katja Haustein undertakes a titanic task: to bring together three bulwarks of twentieth-century intellect, each one so seminal in their own right that even the thought of combining them in one study would seem quixotic. Haustein not only accomplishes the task, but manages to bring out a genuinely comparative account... it is a very useful book to have read, and one which, I am certain, I will return to again and again.’ — Eleni Papargyriou, Comparative Critical Studies 10, 2013, 407-09
  • ‘This book contains several beautiful, thoughtfully chosen illustrations, and is a useful source of information about scholarship in German on Proust... a significant and stimulating contribution to the scholarship on these three important writers.’ — Áine Larkin, Modern Language Review 110.1, January 2015, 228-29 (full text online)

Published August 2011

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

  • ‘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