Contemporary French Poetry: Towards a Minor Poetics
Daisy Sainsbury
Research Monographs in French Studies 65•26 July 2021
- ‘Sainsbury has opened up a hospitable space for further reflection and critical engagement. This is a sure-handed, accessible and very knowledgeable study of what is challenging, and critically important, work.’ — Michael G. Kelly, Modern Language Review 119.2, 2024, 273-74 (full text online)
Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000
Clive Scott
Legenda (General Series) •1 December 2002
- ‘Crossing the boundary between the critical and the creative, Clive Scott continues the debate on the 'undecidable' in the meaning of art text and concomitant problems in the theory of translation.’ — Roger Pensom, Modern Language Review 99.1, 2004, 281-2 (full text online)
- ‘The imaginative and sensitive essays explore the principles of translation and the notion of comparative literature... Stimulating arguments link all the essays, such as the celebration of the necessary difference between source and target texts, especially in poetry, where 'the' meaning remains defiantly unseizable.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 116
- ‘Scott is a critic who can find the perfect critical expression for the tiniest little effect, who can describe microscopic modulations of thought and language, and thereby give them status in the reading process. He is also a critic with his eye on the big picture, who has produced a discipline-defining book, showing us where we have got to and suggesting where next we might profitably go. It richly deserved to win the Gapper Prize.’ — Patrick McGuinness, French Studies LVIII.3, 2004, 446-7
Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology
Clive Scott
Legenda (General Series) •10 October 2012
- ‘In echoing Walter Benjamin’s disapproval of the view that a translation is intended for ‘readers who do not understand the original’, Clive Scott convincingly argues in favour of translation as a literary art that helps promote the language of the source text rather than seeks to provide substitutes for it.’ — Ramona Fotiade, French Studies 68.1, January 2014, 143-44
- ‘The literary translation urged on us in this seismic manifesto is neither the creation of an object nor the reaching of a target: ‘Translation’s area of operation is not two langues, but language itself, and translation’s business is not merely to provide a version of a text, but to make the provision of that version a fruitful con- tribution to the development of the expressive potentialities of the language medium’.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.1, January 2014, 130-31
- ‘The real achievement of this volume, I think, is that it pushes for an overhaul of current understanding of the task of the (literary) translator. Even readers and translators who reject some of his individual claims and particular ideas will find that the thrust of the work as a whole leaves a lasting impression. If all this does is serve to remind the translator not to translate as would a machine (word for word, from one language to another, searching for sameness), this is still a valuable contribution.’ — Mairi McLaughlin, Comparative Literature Studies 52.3, 2015, 653-56
Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry
Richard Serrano
Studies In Comparative Literature 7•1 May 2002
- ‘A book which illustrates the xing (a kind of evocation or opening stimulus) in Serrano's densely interesting and polysemic introduction.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.2, April 2004, 238
The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi 1817-1837
Edited by Prue Shaw
Italian Perspectives 1•30 September 1998
Perpetual Motion: Studies in French Poetry from Surrealism to the Postmodern
Michael Sheringham
Selected Essays 2•25 May 2017
- ‘Sheringham s’y révèle un maître de l’art du compte rendu... Ce livre si riche en intuitions, détours, élucidations et remarquables traductions, se lira aussi comme l’art poétique d’un grand critique.’ — Jean Khalfa, French Studies 73.1, 145 (full text online)
- ‘Here is a reader finely attuned to the myriad ways in which poetry seeks out new encounters with reality through endless linguistic experimentation and play... it is his ability to unlock the detail of what poetry accordingly helps concretize and crystallize, mentally, spiritually and emotionally, that will stimulate and delight those guided from essay to essay on an adventure ever in the making.’ — Michael Brophy, Irish Journal of French Studies 18, 2018, 229-30
- ‘Poignant and richly rewarding... [Sheringham] offers an authoritative view of current academic study of a vast number of authors, major and minor, writing on almost the entire Surrealist and post-Surrealist constellation.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.3, July 2019, 356-57
- ‘Questa scelta, in parte postuma, di scritti conferma in definitiva, per la varietà e ricchezza degli argomenti trattati e per l’acuità dello sguardo del suo A., la qualità di una ricerca che ha sempre rifuggito troppo facili schematismi per affrontare dimensioni assai diverse del poetico come quella oracolare, mistica o linguisticamente trasgressiva con eguale curiosità intellettuale e finezza d’analisi.’ — Fabio Scotto, Studi francesi 188, 2020, 396
Matthew Arnold and Goethe
James Simpson
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 11•1 January 1979
Quevedo on Parnassus: Allusive Context and Literary Theory in the Love-Lyric
Paul Julian Smith
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 25•1 January 1987
Futurism: A Microhistory
Edited by Sascha Bru, Luca Somigli, and Bart Van den Bossche
Italian Perspectives 36•29 September 2017
- ‘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)
Dante and Petrarch in the Garden of Language
Francesca Southerden
Italian Perspectives 57•13 September 2022
The Ethics of the Poet: Marina Tsvetaeva's Art in the Light of Conscience
Ute Stock
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 62•1 May 2005
- ‘This book is an important contribution to Tsvetaeva studies, and its examination of an overlooked aspect of the poet’s work should provoke many readers to return to the texts it discusses, open to new insight and wary of categorical judgements.’ — Katharine Hodgson, Modern Language Review 102, 2007, 610 (full text online)
- ‘This is an important and serious study of Tsvetaeva's ethical poetics as it evolved in exile... The study provides an important addition to the existing critical literature on the poet and her thought.’ — Greta Slobin, Russian Review 67, 2008, 327-28
Invention: The Language of English Renaissance Poetics
Rocío G. Sumillera
Legenda (General Series) •23 September 2019
- ‘Distrust of the role of originality in Renaissance poesis often leads literary scholars to prioritize logico-rhetorical accounts of invention, which recommended writers to select their topics from authoritative discursive repertoires. Rocío G. Sumillera’s meticulous critical history of poetic invention up to Renaissance England is a persuasive caveat about our need to revise those notions.’ — Zenón Luis-Martínez, Parergon 38.1, 2021, 260-61 (full text online)
- ‘Taken together, Sumillera and Baron's books [Scarlett Baron, The Riddle of Creativity] cover literature and theory from Aristotle to the present. Each book reaches widely across European languages, combining science, theology and linguistics with conventional literary works. They look from opposite directions at the vanishing point that is the Romantic ideal of the artist as a lamp or organic entity, existing free from influence of any kind. The scope and ambition of the two projects is impressive. There is a great deal here to admire.’ — Bart van Es, Times Literary Supplement 11 December 2020
- ‘This is a wide-ranging and well-argued piece of work, with a comprehensive and useful bibliography. It makes an extremely valuable contribution to the study of a concept which must be at the heart of our understanding of literary composition in the Renaissance.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 57.1, 2021, 142 (full text online)
- ‘All in all, this is a detailed yet wide-ranging scholarly book that will serve students and scholars equally well. Although its focus is English Renaissance poetics, the breadth of reference to European sources gives this study a notable ballast and breadth. Sumillera is particularly adept at the selection and presentation of primary quotations, finding the perfect examples — and plenty of them — to illustrate her argument. This makes the book a great resource, as well as a pleasure to read.’ — Catherine Bates, Modern Language Review 117.2, 2022, 278-79 (full text online)
- ‘This much-needed book is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched chronological overview of the concept of the invention of topics (inventio) in poetry, as it was originally understood in classical rhetoric, that lies at the heart of Renaissance theories of imitation as individual composition.’ — Goran Stanivukovic, Renaissance and Reformation 44.4, Fall 2021, 311-13 (full text online)
Queer Genealogies in Transnational Barcelona: Maria-Mercè Marçal, Cristina Peri Rossi, and Flavia Company
Natasha Tanna
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 37•30 December 2019
Literature and Religion
Edited by Andrew Tate
Yearbook of English Studies 39.1/2•1 January 2009
Sacramental Realism: Gertrud von le Fort and German Catholic Literature in the Weimar Republic and Third Reich (1924-46)
Helena M. Tomko
Bithell Series of Dissertations 31 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 68•14 January 2007
- ‘Helena Tomko’s impressive dissertation on Gertrud von le Fort may very well inspire at least a younger generation of German literature scholars to investigate religious themes and motifs, as well as important but often unjustly overlooked texts by authors, such as le Fort, whose works were influenced by their religious beliefs.’ — Gregor Thuswaldner, Modern Language Review 104, 2009, 604 (full text online)
Dante Alighieri: Four Political Letters
Translated and with a commentary by Claire E. Honess
Critical Texts 6•1 October 2007
Casimir Britannicus: English Translations, Paraphrases, and Emulations of the Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski
Edited by Piotr Urbański and Krzysztof Fordoński
Critical Texts 11•1 May 2008
Casimir Britannicus: English Translations, Paraphrases, and Emulations of the Poetry of Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski
Edited by Piotr Urbański and Krzysztof Fordoński
Critical Texts 25•15 October 2010
- ‘The anthology is a sound philological achievement which illustrates an important link between the mostly Protestant English and Scottish poets and their most famous Polish Catholic counterpart, a continuous poetic interest from the mid-seventeenth to the nineteenth century. ‘Casimir Britannicus’ thus becomes for us Sarbiewski rediscovered.’ — George Gömöri, Modern Language Review 107.3, July 2012, 1007-09 (full text online)
- ‘In the well written and well-structured introduction to the volume ... Krzysztof Fordoński and Piotr Urbański identify six waves of Sarbiewski’s long-lasting popularity ... The editors did an excellent job in assembling this carefully thought out critical edition.’ — Robert Maryks, Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu July-December 2011, 758-59
- ‘These days, enthusiasts of Neo-Latin poetry in general, and Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski (Sarbievius) in particular, are few and far between. Perhaps only they will recognize the great importance of this new anthology, but all who do take cognizance of it will receive it with gratitude.’ — Charles S. Kraszewski, Polish Review Fall 2008
- ‘Casimir Britannicus is a landmark publication.’ — Anne Barbeau Gardiner, Sarmatian Review 30.1, January 2010, 1469-71
Constructing Feminine Poetics in the Works of a Late-20th-Century Catalan Woman Poet: Maria-Mercè Marçal
Noèlia Díaz Vicedo
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 90•1 March 2014
- ‘Este libro de Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo constituye una apreciable aportación a los estudios sobre la obra de Maria-Mercè Marçal en general, y sobre su poesía en particular.’ — Javier Letrán, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 94, 2017, 1251-52
Richard Robinson, The Rewarde of Wickednesse
Edited by Allyna E. Ward
Critical Texts 17•6 July 2009
The French Revolution in English Literature and Art
Edited by J. R. Watson
Yearbook of English Studies 19•1 January 1989
Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil
Andrew Webber
Bithell Series of Dissertations 15 / MHRA Texts and Dissertations 30•1 January 1990
The Dialectics of Faith in the Poetry of José Bergamín
Helen Wing
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 42•1 January 1995
Language and Style in a Renaissance Epic: Berni's Corrections to Boiardo's 'Orlando Innamorato'
H. F. Woodhouse
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 17•1 January 1982
Frontier Memory: Cultural Conflict and Exchange in the Romancero fronterizo
Sizen Yiacoup
MHRA Texts and Dissertations 87•1 October 2013
Imagining Iberia in Medieval German Literature
Doriane Zerka 
Transcript 26•31 August 2023
Poetry and the Leningrad Religious-Philosophical Seminar 1974-1980: Music for a Deaf Age
Josephine von Zitzewitz
Legenda (General Series) •1 September 2016
- ‘Von Zitzewitz convincingly demonstrates that the religious-philosophical impulse in general, and a pull to Russian Orthodoxy in particular, was a widespread cultural phenomenon in the late Soviet period, cutting across the official/unofficial divide... von Zitzewitz’s precise situating of her subjects in their unofficial environment constitutes a crucial key to understanding the semantic and formal features of their work, and in turn, the lonely and frustrated spirit of their time.’ — Ainsley Morse, Modern Language Review 112.4, 2017, 1053-55 (full text online)
- ‘In her impeccably researched and documented book, Josephine von Zitzewitz combines an examination of the Religious-Philosophical Seminar with five case studies of poets from the Leningrad underground of the 1970s and 80s... An important contribution to the study of both late-Soviet poetry and religious literary culture.’ — Sarah Clovis Bishop, Slavic and East European Journal 61.4, Winter 2017, 913-14