Naturalism Against Nature: Kinship and Degeneracy in Fin-de-siècle Portugal and Brazil
David J. Bailey
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 48•21 January 2020

  • ‘Naturalism against Nature considerably expands our understanding of how the international literary movement known as Naturalism manifested itself in selected but fully representative writers in Portugal and Brazil... A very useful study and one that should be regarded as required reading for all students and scholars interested in Naturalism and its importance to the Lusophone world.’ — Earl E. Fitz, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.9, October 2020, 1559-1560 (full text online)
  • ‘The transnational dimensions of literary Naturalism operating between Brazil and Portugal are explored in this excellently written book by David Bailey.’ — Richard Cleminson, Modern Language Review 116.4, October 2021, 667-68 (full text online)
  • ‘Contribui o estudo, portanto, para uma melhor compreensão da particularidade da expressão literária naturalista em Portugal e no Brasil.’ — Patrícia H. Baialuna de Andrade, Journal of Lusophone Studies 6.1, Spring 2021

No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa
Maria Tavares
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 32•30 September 2018

  • ‘An excellent scholarly contribution that is both clear and accessible. It must be critically addressed byprofessors, students, and researchers both in and beyond the Lusophone academic sphere.’ — Sandra I. Sousa, Journal of Lusophone Studies 4.1, 2019, 328-30 (full text online)

The Novels of Carmen Laforet: An Aesthetics of Relief
Caragh Wells
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 29•29 April 2019

  • ‘Caragh Wells's seminal exploration of the psychological and aesthetic underpinning of Laforet’s novels is a must-read for anyone interested in such aspects of literature, Hispanic and global.’ — Lilit Žekulin Thwaites, Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research March 2020 (full text online)
  • ‘A required tome for any serious scholar or student of Carmen Laforet. It is a carefully researched and thoughtfully written study that should place Caragh Wells among the elite Laforetian scholars of the day.’ — Mark P. Del Mastro, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.3, March 2020, 444-45

Pascal Quignard: Towards the Vanishing Point
Léa Vuong
Research Monographs in French Studies 48•19 December 2016

  • ‘Léa Vuong’s succinct and insightful book addresses the work of French writer Pascal Quignard through the lenses of absence and disappearance. As Vuong argues, the reception of Quignard in the Anglo-Saxon world remains somewhat limited, while his work within the Hexagon has been the subject of extensive discussions and wide critical recognition. This first thorough study of Quignard’s work in the English language fills a gap while offering a perspective that connects Quignard to a constellation of structuralist and poststructuralist thinkers, in particular with the work of Jacques Lacan and Maurice Blanchot.’ — Étienne Lussier, Modern and Contemporary France 4 Oct 2017 (full text online)
  • ‘A well-written, well-documented analysis that manages to give a good glimpse into a voluminous literary production (Quignard’s publications are now nearing eighty books), while reporting on several important, and less studied, aspects of Quignard’s oeuvre.’ — Jean-Louis Pautrot, H-France 17, December 2017, no. 236
  • ‘Both specialists and those not very familiar with Quignard will find something of value here... the range of texts considered, which help the author trace broad points of commonality across an immense and still growing body of work, and the generally compelling characterization and descriptions of the text, will be helpful to those seeking an introduction to Quignard.’ — Joseph Acquito, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 664-66 (full text online)
  • ‘Di questo dibattito, l’autrice traccia nella «Conclusio- ne» un lucido bilancio, tra accuse di parisianisme e riconoscimento in patria, moltiplicarsi delle traduzioni e interesse ancora limitato da parte della critica in altre lingue, sottolineando la sotterranea portata sovversiva di una scrittura che ostenta la propria inattualità, che ritorce il fascino esercitato dal linguaggio contro il potere euristico della parola, che ingloba il meta-discorso che suscita, condannando talora il commentatore alla parafrasi o all’imitazione.’ — Stefano Genetti, Studi francesi 185, 2018, 367-68

Paul Celan’s Unfinished Poetics: Readings in the Sous-Oeuvre
Thomas C. Connolly
Germanic Literatures 16•26 February 2018

  • ‘It would exceed the limits of this review to enter further into the many merits of Connolly’s monograph, from his impressive discoveries within an “oeuvre” so thoroughly examined as Celan’s, to the judiciousness of his writing... The “sous-oeuvre” that Connolly broaches can “never” be entirely disclosed: every disclosure leaves traces to be read otherwise. It is for this reason that Paul Celan’s Un nished Poetics: Readings in the Sous-Oeuvre calls for further readings, in every sense.’ — Kristina Mendicino, German Studies Review 42.2, May 2019, 402-404 (full text online)
  • ‘This book constitutes a refreshing approach to the work of Paul Celan... constitutes a sharp and compelling update to Celan criticism.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies 55.3, July 2019, 355
  • ‘Paul Celan’s Unfinished Poetics is highly recommended, as it demonstrates that a sous-œuvre opens up a fabulous new source of interest for poetry lovers. This goes far beyond Celan’s writings.’ — Gerrit-Jan Berendse, Modern Language Review 114.4, October 2019, 894-96 (full text online)

Pepetela and the MPLA: The Ethical Evolution of a Revolutionary Writer
Phillip Rothwell
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 36•30 April 2019

  • ‘The result is a deft, nuanced and accomplished analysis not only of Pepetela and his most important works, but of contemporary Angola and the way that the MPLA has wielded its power... It is a landmark work of scholarship from one of the field’s most accomplished critics, and essential reading for scholars of Lusophone African cultures, Angolan social history and Luso-Brazilian and African literatures.’ — Lanie Millar, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.6, 2020, 1069-1070

Photographing the Unseen Mexico: Maya Goded’s Socially Engaged Documentaries
Dominika Gasiorowski
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 21•25 February 2019

  • ‘By employing innovative, subaltern questioning, Dominika Gasiorowski makes an exceptionally strong case for engaging with this socially committed Mexican documentary filmmaker and photographer and has produced an extremely thorough and impactful study of Maya Goded’s work.’ — Erica Segre, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 5.1, 2021, 186-87 (full text online)

The Poetics of Early Russian Crime Fiction 1860-1917: Deciphering Stories of Detection
Claire Whitehead
Legenda (General Series) •10 September 2018

  • ‘An intricately researched and fascinating exploration of the origins and development of a forgotten genre... Whitehead’s re- evaluation of Dostoevskii’s novels (including Brothers Karamazov) as crime literature is rewarding and insightful. Even more valuable, however, is her analysis of Dostoevskii’s forgotten peers, who created the landmarks of this fluid and reactive genre.’ — Muireann Maguire, Slavonic and East European Review 90.4, October 2020, 767-69 (full text online)
  • ‘Яркая книга Клер Уайтхед убедительно демонстрирует, что отечественные исто- рики литературы напрасно не обращают внимания на чрезвычайно интересный, причем не только в тематическом плане, но и в идейном, и в плане поэтики, кри- минальный жанр русской литературы. Это (как и игнорирование отечественных фантастики, оккультной прозы, колониального романа, романа о городских жули- ках и мошенниках и т.д.) значительно обедняет картину русской литературы XIX — начала XX в. Кроме того, рассмотрение «Преступления и наказания» Достоевского и «Шведской спички» Чехова в контексте уголовной прозы позволило исследова- тельнице внести ценный вклад в интерпретацию этих произведений. И наконец, для отечественных литературоведов книга может послужить своего рода путево- дителем по современной англоязычной нарратологии.’ — A. I. Reitblat, Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 175, May/June 2022, 343-50

The Poetry of Céline Arnauld: From Dada to Ultra-Modern
Ruth Hemus
Research Monographs in French Studies 58•28 September 2020

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

Quim Monzó and Contemporary Catalan Culture (1975–2018): Cultural Normalization, Postmodernism and National Politics
Guillem Colom-Montero
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 45•26 July 2021

  • ‘Con una prosa nítida que nada tiene que ver con la infumable y obtusa jerga académica de tantos textos universitarios, Colom aborda el personaje, la obra y la trayectoria de Monzó de un modo integral, desde sus inicios como enfant terrible contracultural que actuaba desde los márgenes del sistema cultural hasta su posición de centralidad en el panorama cultural y mediático y en el canon literario catalán... Lean el libro de Guillem Colom sobre Quim Monzó, un hombre que — en esto tampoco ho cambiado nada en cinco décadas — siempre se ha tomado muy en serio esto de escribir y muy burlonamente lo de ser escritor.’ — Pere Antoni Pons, Última Hora 19 December 2021
  • ‘Confessa que sempre ha llegit Quim Monzó, que sempre l’ha fascinat, però en cap cas amaga que algunes de les contradiccions de l’escriptor català li produïen tensió.’ — Cristina Ros, Ara interview, 5 January 2022
  • ‘Given the importance (cultural, social and political) that Monzó has in current Catalan culture, we must celebrate the publication of a study as fundamental as the one we are reviewing... Conceived as a study of Quim Monzó’s literary and cultural trajectory, Guillem Colom-Montero’s monograph offers a broad frieze of Catalan culture between 1975 and 2018, linking it to the debates, anxieties and tensions generated by the development of counterculture, libertarian thought and postmodernity. In this way, much of the interest and value of the book – which is highly readable, well-documented and rich – is due to its focus as an interdisciplinary cultural study.’ — Maria Dasca, International Journal of Iberian Studies 35.1, 1 March 2022, 96-98 (full text online)
  • ‘El llibre s’inicia, l’any 2018, amb la distinció que Òmnium Cultural feia a l’escriptor català atorgant-li el premi d’Honor de les Lletres Catalanes. La captació d’aquell moment i el repàs del discurs que Monzó va fer durant la gala, on vinculava passat i present de la història de la repressió i l’exili a Catalunya, tenint en compte que el president de l’entitat, Jordi Cuixart, ja estava empresonat, produeixen un efecte de narrativa circular, d’obra rodona, que s’obre i es tanca tan coherentment, que ja des del principi hom pot copsar la direcció de les tesis de Colom-Montero... El fet que el llibre recuperi gran part de l’obra oblidada de Monzó posa en evidència els efectes mateixos de la normalització sobre el camp d’estudis culturals i literaris català pràcticament fins a l’actualitat. I alhora, permet connectar les tesis de Colom-Montero amb altres treballs crítics d’àmbit hispànic (Martínez 2012; Delgado 2014) que també han revisat qüestions relacionades amb la cultura en general, i les seves relacions a’ — Júlia Ojeda Caba, Caplletra 72, 2022, 315-19

Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy
Julia Caterina Hartley
Transcript 12•23 September 2019

  • ‘Hartley’s erudite, persuasive, and reader-friendly book is a powerful debut, an irresistible invitation to love literature. I confidently look forward to her future work.’ — Thomas Pavel, Modern Philology 24 August 2020 (full text online)
  • ‘Hartley’s book contributes significantly to the fields of Dante and Proust stu- dies. Moreover, it is persuasive in demonstrating the rich productive potential of this dynamic, interactive approach, setting an important example for literary comparisons to come.’ — Valentina Mele, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 891-92 (full text online)
  • ‘By practicing a meticulous close reading of selected passages from both the Commedia and the Recherche, Hartley’s intention is to read Dante in light of Proust and Proust in light of Dante, in a continuous change of perspective that keeps the interpreter’s attention receptive enough to uncover, in each author, thematic and stylistic aspects that would not otherwise have been noticed... A stimulating methodological contribution to the field of comparative literature.’ — Alessandra Aloisi, H-France 20.204, November 2020
  • ‘A scholar who grew up in a trilingual family (English, Italian, French) and who therefore can slip smoothly from one linguistic world to another, Julia Caterina Hartley performs an exquisitely comparatist analysis in Reading Dante and Proust by Analogy. Hartley’s conclusions are quite unexpected and shed new light on two authors who share more than one might think: Alighieri, as a medieval writer who anticipates modernity, and Proust, as a modern writer who engages with the weight of the past... In sum, this book is a meticulous comparative work at its best.’ — Ilaria Serra, Speculum 96.2, 2021, 509-10
  • ‘En plus d’être une brillante étude comparée de Proust et de Dante, ce livre offre un fin plaidoyer pour la littérature comparée considérée autant comme un art de la critique que comme une forme de critique littéraire... L’objectif est atteint, les deux œuvres sont lues ‘afresh’, dans une urgente réciprocité.’ — Hugues Azérad, French Studies 76.1, January 2022, 129–30 (full text online)
  • ‘An enlightening, original, and powerful book, addressed to Dante scholars and Proust scholars, as well as comparatists and scholars of literature in general... Besides the simple fact that Hartley’s work gives us the pleasure of looking at two masterpieces together, with an elegant and enjoyable style, this volume is an important example of how comparative literature, across space and time, can tell us something new even on texts about which everything has already been said, and on literary structures in general, by finely combining close and distant reading.’ — Serena Vandi, Italian Studies 77.2, 2022, 202-03 (full text online)

Renaissance Vegetarianism: The Philosophical Afterlives of Porphyry’s On Abstinence
Cecilia Muratori
Italian Perspectives 46•28 September 2020

  • ‘The meticulously researched study of the generation and Renaissance receptions of Porphyry's On Abstinence in Cecilia Muratori's Renaissance Vegetarianism is well worth attention from Romanticists, alongside the Early Modern scholars, Classicists, and Animal Studies scholars that will comprise its main audience... Literal and figurative translations of ethical, philosophical, and dietary ideas upon vegetarianism and veganism connect ancient and Early Modern thought in Muratori's admirable study, with glimpses of Thomas Taylor and Shelley suggesting the future of Porphyry's reception in the Romantic period.’ — Amanda Blake Davis, The Coleridge Bulletin 57, Summer 2021, 141-46
  • ‘Muratori’s work provides us not only with an overview of philosophical thinking on vegetarianism from ancient authors to their reception by Renaissance but also with interesting keys to understand the issues that worried intellectuals of those times. Her analysis gives the main clues of the reception of Porphyry’s work and shows how crucial it was for the evolution of vegetarian thinking that is still strongly present in our days. The rigor of the research and the excellent way the contents are presented with a simple but accurate drafting make this work accessible and fascinating for scholars as well for curious readers.’ — Monica Durán Mañas, Mediterranea 7, 2022 (full text online)
  • ‘The most celebrated work on animals to emerge from ancient philosophy, Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Killing Animals, argues at length against the Stoics that animals have reason or “inner logos,” in part on the basis of their behavior but also on the basis of the claim that some animals can understand and produce language, or “outer logos.” And this was one of those texts that really was recovered and read avidly in the Renaissance. Just how avidly, and with what consequences, is shown by Cecilia Muratori’s Renaissance Vegetarianism, a wide-ranging, fascinating, and frequently entertaining survey of ideas about animals in this period.’ — Peter Adamson, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Published online, 2023 (full text online)
  • ‘To add to the many merits of Muratori’s accomplishment, the book includes a bibliography that is comprehensive as well as carefully selected. The index of names and subjects is thorough and extremely helpful. The many philosophical discussions never read stiltedly and are always recounted in a thought-provoking and engaging style. Above all, this tour de force on the history of vegetarianism makes the reader reflect on a central question that remains unanswered to this day: can a being that is sentient and rational be legitimately consumed and turned into food?’ — E. Giada Capasso, Modern Language Review 118.3, July 2023, 403-05 (full text online)

Reprojecting the City: Urban Space and Dissident Sexualities in Recent Latin American Cinema
Benedict Hoff
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 13•13 February 2017

  • ‘One of the latest additions to an expanding catalogue of queer approaches to Latin American cinema, Reprojecting the City identifies a ‘conceptual “sweet-spot”’ at the intersection between Urban, Queer, and Cinema Studies.’ — Rebecca Jarman, Modern Language Review 113.4, October 2018, 892-93 (full text online)
  • ‘The four film-analysis chapters are very well pitched, deftly teasing out the representations of sexual identities manifested through the relationships mediated by the differing geopolitical urban scenarios... Hoff’s monograph is a valuable contribution to the study of sexuality in contemporary Latin-American cinemas as well as to the aesthetics and geopolitics of cinematic space. It will be valuable to researchers in the field and, because of its accessibility, to undergraduate students of South American cinema.’ — Sheldon Penn, Bulletin of Spanish Visual Studies 2.2, 2018, 339-40

The Rhetoric of Exile: Duress and the Imagining of Force
Vladimir Zorić
Studies In Comparative Literature 39•19 December 2016

  • ‘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

Saints and Monsters in Medieval French and Occitan Literature: Sublime and Abject Bodies
Huw Grange
Research Monographs in French Studies 53•17 May 2017

  • ‘The author moves with an impressive lightness of touch across a huge range of versions of four saints’ lives — those of Margaret, George, Honorat, and Enimia — covering verse and prose, and Latin, French, and Occitan, in mostly unpublished manuscript versions... a considerable accomplishment.’ — Luke Sunderland, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 428-29
  • ‘This well-crafted book captures the goodwill of its audience from page one. Its author, Huw Grange, makes a simple inversion that rights a chronological wrong: saints are not the comic-book superheroes of the Middle Ages; rather today’s superheroes continue in the medieval saints’ tradition of extraordinary corporality... Saints and Monsters is what one would hope for a book of its kind insofar as its sophisticated engagement with theory is everywhere also an engagement with the literary object.’ — Brian J. Reilly, H-France 18.175, August 2018
  • ‘Grange’s final words affirm that the lives he’s described “want to live,” and in that want lies his book’s central thesis; but it is just possible that these saints are, thanks in part to Grange’s efforts at telling their stories, still living; and it is just possible that so are we.’ — Cary Howie, Speculum 95.1, January 2020, 249-50

Samuel Butler and the Science of the Mind: Evolution, Heredity and Unconscious Memory
Cristiano Turbil
Studies In Comparative Literature 48•28 September 2020

Santería, Vodou and Resistance in Caribbean Literature: Daughters of the Spirits
Paul Humphrey
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 12•25 February 2019

  • ‘Humphrey does not argue for the homogenization of [Vodou and Santería], but for the honest recognition and acceptance of their differences. Moving past the violent stereotyping [...], he encourages us to treat these religions as ‘living systems’ in which slavery, colonialism, creolization and hybridity intersect in a dynamic negotiation of all the complexities that create what would be a ‘postcolonial’ Caribbean.’ — Janelle Rodriques, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.2, 2020, 294-95

Saracens and their World in Boiardo and Ariosto
Maria Pavlova
Italian Perspectives 47•28 September 2020

  • ‘This carefully-researched monograph achieves its aim of offering “a comprehensive insight” into the vast system of pagan characters within the romance epics of Boiardo and Ariosto... Scholars and graduate students invested in the Este and the Italian chivalric poem will be the most likely to follow the fine-grained analyses of the incredible genealogy and fictional heroes. The broader strokes will interest specialists in adjacent languages and fields. Pavlova’s results should be made available also to undergraduates, albeit in more accessible forms, when we teach these spacious poems from Renaissance Ferrara.’ — Jennifer Kathleen Mackenzie, Annali d'Italianistica 39, 2021, 514-516
  • ‘Scholars have usually highlighted an opposition between Boiardo’s admired representation of the Saracen world and its negative portrayal in Ariosto’s poem, and have interpreted these different approaches in the light of the historical, political, and religious transformations that took place in Italy between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Pavlova aims to challenge this reading by reconsidering the close relationship between Italy and the Islamic world through an original postcolonial perspective, and by reading the two poems in the context of the literary tradition to which they belong.’ — Francesco Lucioli, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 260-61 (full text online)

Scenographies of Perception: Sensuousness in Hegel, Novalis, Rilke, and Proust
Christian Jany
Studies In Comparative Literature 45•14 May 2019

  • ‘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

Self-Conscious Realism: Metafiction and the Nineteenth-Century Russian Novel
Margarita Vaysman
Legenda (General Series) •26 July 2021

  • ‘Vaysman’s valuable work [...] encourage[s] further and more general scholarly accounts of the ways in which metapoetics worked as part of realism—and, more broadly, as part of the metapoetic aspect in the Russian cultural tradition.’ — Konstantine Klioutchkine, Russian Review 81.4, October 2022, 753-54
  • ‘Vaysman has carried out an original investigation into a neglected subject, defining her work as a contribution to current discussion of realist writing as a transnational phenomenon and arguing that classical Russian literature was exceptionally rich in self-conscious narrative at a time when such narrative was rare in the French and English realist traditions.’ — Derek Offord, Slavonic and East European Review 100.3, July 2022, 533-35
  • ‘Vaysman convincingly demonstrates that [nineteenth-century Russian novel] uses sophisticated narrative strategies that emphasize an uneasy relationship between the fictional worlds of literary texts and social reality [...]. Our hope is that the future of literary studies belongs to exactly this kind of studies: sophisticated and free from stereotypical approaches to its subjects.’ — Kirill Zubkov, Russian Literature 130, 2022, 95–109 (full text online)
  • ‘A well-researched, innovative analysis of metafiction in the nineteenth-century Russian realist novel... Overall, Vaysman’s engaging, timely study should be considered essential reading for scholars who seek to understand nineteenth-century Russian literature more thoroughly, as well as for anyone who is interested in the complex correlation between politics and aesthetics.’ — Melissa L. Miller, Modern Language Review 2024, 119.1, 172-74 (full text online)

Southern Regional French: A Linguistic Analysis of Language and Dialect Contact
Damien Mooney
Research Monographs in French Studies 47•19 December 2016

  • ‘Encapsulates both the challenges and the promise of linguistics for history... the kinds of suggestive connections between linguistic form, social identity, and cultural context traced in chapter six hint at the considerable possibilities for integrating a substantive study of language into cultural history. It is to be hoped that more historians will take up this challenge.’ — Paul Cohen, H-France 18, February 2018, no. 5
  • ‘Un travail de grande qualité et sera une référence incontournable pour tous les dialectologues, phonologues et sociolinguistes qui s’intéressent à la variation phonologique en français.’ — Julien Eychenne, French Studies 72.3, July 2018, 484-85

Spatial Plots: Virtuality and the Embodied Mind in Baricco, Camilleri and Calvino
Marzia Beltrami
Italian Perspectives 45•26 July 2021

Structures of Subjugation in Dutch Literature
Judit Gera
Germanic Literatures 12•19 December 2016

  • ‘This informative, insightful, confident, and provocative account of Dutch literature, which focuses on the complex ways in which it embodies and embeds subjugation, deserves to be read by any scholar of European literature interested in an intersectional approach to reading literature. To those teaching and studying Dutch literature, Structures of Subjugation in Dutch Literature provides a worthwhile and lively addition to the literary histories available in English.’ — Jane Fenoulhet, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 675-77 (full text online)
  • ‘Above all, Gera’s analyses are impressive examples of the development and use of new reading strategies. Her analyses gave me a sense of liberation. The fact that messages can be so hidden in the language of social and literary reality gives an explanation of the persistence of the established order in gender and race-biased inequalities. With a growing awareness of our literary heritage, a critical attitude towards ingrained ideas and their wording becomes possible. We enter a new era.’ — Den Haag Agnes Sneller, Dutch Crossing Online, 2018 (full text online)

Sublime Conclusions: Last Man Narratives from Apocalypse to Death of God
Robert K. Weninger
Studies In Comparative Literature 43•29 September 2017

  • unsigned notice, The Year's Work in English Studies 98.1, 2019, 657-58

Swinburne’s Style: An Experiment in Verse History
L. M. Kilbride
Legenda (General Series) •10 September 2018

  • ‘An ambitious attempt to reckon with the poet’s achievement in verse... this book helps us to see Swinburne’s corpus for what it is: one of the most sophisticated formal projects in English verse, no matter what T. S. Eliot thought.’ — Justin A. Sider, English Literature in Transition 1880-1920 63.2, 2020, 280-83
  • ‘Kilbride provides the reader with insightful textual analyses that shed new light on a selection of Swinburne’s poetical works, some of which are canonical, others still fairly neglected.’ — Giovanni Bassi, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 905-07 (full text online)
  • ‘Combines a practitioner’s delight in Swinburne’s verse textures with a scholar’s insight into poetic experiment in nineteenth-century Britain and a literary theorist’s investment in social critique.’ — Julia F. Saville, Victorian Studies 63.1, Autumn 2020, 152-53 (full text online)

Theorizing Medieval Race: Saracen Representations in Old French Literature
Victoria Turner
Research Monographs in French Studies 55•23 September 2019

  • ‘She has created new paradigms for thinking about race and representation in the Middle Ages that should become part of the critical conversation. While Turner’s book focuses exclusively on French material, it is applicable to the European Middle Ages more widely and is particularly worthwhile because 1) she elaborates a comprehensive and sophisticated critical framework for her interrogation of medieval racial representation, and 2) her textual interpretations are original and imaginative, not simply repetitions of previous scholarly consensus.’ — Margaret Aziza Pappano, Speculum 98.1, January 2023, 339 (full text online)

Thinking Cinema with Proust
Patrick ffrench
Moving Image 7•22 August 2018

  • ‘ffrench masterfully argues that Proust’s novel undoes our confidence in the objectivity of memory and of history... This brief account cannot do justice to the intricacies of ffrench’s book, which will serve as a valuable resource to scholars of the novel and of the cinema.’ — Patrick M. Bray, French Studies 73.4, October 2019, 663-64 (full text online)
  • ‘Thinking cinema ‘with and through Proust’, this brilliant book unravels manifold new connections, resonances, and echoes across diverse fields of knowledge, demonstrating amply that the chapter of Proust’s relation to cinema is far from being closed.’ — Marion Schmid, Modern Language Review 115.4, October 2020, 922-23 (full text online)

Twentieth-Century Sephardic Authors from the Former Yugoslavia: A Judeo-Spanish Tradition
Željko Jovanović
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 41•28 September 2020

  • ‘La investigación que presenta Željko Jovanović en su monografía Twentieth-Century Sephardic Authors from the Former Yugoslavia. A Judeo-Spanish Tradition era, yo creo, necesaria. El autor ofrece, en los tres capítulos que forman la parte palpitante del volumen, una reflexión muy finamente detallada de la evolución de la literatura oral en el ámbito de las comunidades sefardíes de la antigua Yugoslavia... Finalmente, sería injusto terminar esta reseña sin subrayar la riqueza de las notas que acompañan cada capítulo y que no son una simple añadidura, sino que aportan información útil e interesante; además,el gusto de esta monografía está enriquecido por las fotografías esparcidas en el volumen y que restituyen, a través del poderdela imagen, la vivacidad de los protagonistas que Željko Jovanović ha logrado retratar con inteligente maestría.’ — Paola Bellomi, Meldar 2, 2021, 61-64 (full text online)
  • ‘En su exposición, Jovanović aúna siempre el rigor positivista con la sutileza interpretativa: la riqueza de la información, el respeto a los hechos e incluso la atención a los mínimos detalles textuales no excluyen otras formas de análisis que, manejadas con cautela, permiten al autor construir un libro sólido y brillante, que arroja luz sobre muchas cuestiones: la oralidad y su relación con la escritura, la historia de las mujeres y de las minorías y, naturalmente, la pervivencia del legado hispánico más allá de los límites de la Península.’ — Álvaro Alonso, Boletín de literatura oral 11, 2021, 321-23 (full text online)
  • ‘This is a valuable book, well thought out, with an extensive bibliography (including many items in Serbo-Croat), illustrations and useful indices.’ — Bulletin of Spanish Studies February 2022 (full text online)
  • ‘Unburdened by jargon and meticulously researched, Jovanović’s study is a welcome resource for those working on the literary heritage of the Sephardim. The text will also be of interest to those writing on Spanish–Yugoslav relations, cultural history, transnational literary transmission and translation, and linguistic varia- tions of Ladino across the twentieth century.’ — Alma Prelec, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 271-72 (full text online)
  • ‘El libro es una aportación importante al estudio de la cultura de los sefardíes de Serbia y Bosnia, al conocimiento de la cultura sefardí en general y su evolución en época contemporánea y, más ampliamente, a los estudios sobre las relaciones entre cultura popular y creación literaria culta y al análisis de la construcción de relatos sobre la identidad cultural y la memorialización del pasado de una minoría, tomando como base una tradición folklórica en proceso de desaparición.’ — Paloma Díaz-Mas, MEAH 70, 2022, 257-62

Unidentified Narrative Objects and the New Italian Epic
Kate Elizabeth Willman
Italian Perspectives 42•25 February 2019

Utopian Identities: A Cognitive Approach to Literary Competitions
Clementina Osti
Studies In Comparative Literature 41•22 August 2018

Venetian Inscriptions: Vernacular Writing for Public Display in Medieval and Renaissance Venice
Ronnie Ferguson
Italian Perspectives 50•26 July 2021

  • ‘The rigorous standards of the author’s nearly decade-long project will certainly satisfy professional historians, but lay readers too will find themselves thoroughly engaged by the manner in which he uses each inscription vividly to evoke multiple aspects of Venice’s social, religious, cultural and political life, as well as the characters of some remarkable individuals.’ — Roderick Conway Morris, Times Literary Supplement 21 January 2022
  • ‘A short review cannot do justice to the rich array of insights and ideas that thread through this fascinating book, nor can it reflect the dedication and time that were needed to compile the catalogue. Ranging from the familiar to the seemingly unnoticed, these inscriptions add myriad fragments to the enormous jigsaw of the townscape of late medieval and Renaissance Venice.’ — Deborah Howard, Burlington Magazine 165, February 2023, 207-08
  • ‘The Italian Perspectives series, founded by Zygmunt Barański and Laura Lepschy in 1998, reaches its half-century in impressive fashion with this outstanding work of scholarship... As well as making a major contribution to epigraphy, the volume includes a wealth of information on the urban fabric, society, culture, and language that will make it an invaluable resource for Venetian Studies during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.’ — Brian Richardson, Modern Language Review 118.2, 2023, 258-60 (full text online)

Women and Nationhood in Restoration Spain 1874-1931: The State as Family
Rocío Rødtjer
Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures 34•23 April 2019

  • ‘This is a fine and important book that will hopefully convince those critics prone to discounting the contributions of conservative women writers (Asensi and de los Ríos) to make the effort to read them, keeping in mind Rødtjer’s suggestive arguments.’ — Alda Blanco, Bulletin of Spanish Studies 97.3, March 2020, 440-41

Writers' Block: The Paris Antifascist Congress of 1935
Jacob Boas
Legenda (General Series) •19 December 2016

  • ‘[Boas concludes that] this Congress was a 'shining assembly of the princes of the pen' and that it marked the apogee of the Soviet influence in the West, shortly to be eroded by a series of show trials in 1936/38... whereas Western writers suffered no long-term damage to their careers, many Soviet delegates awaited a dire future: Kirshon and Koltsov perished in a GULAG, Babel vanished with- out trace in 1939, and even Boris Pasternak – though surviving the Stalinist era – was eventually denied the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded him in 1985.’ — Jörg Thunecke, International Feuchtwanger Society Newsletter 22, 2017, 66-68
  • ‘Situating his subject against the menacing backdrop of rising totalitarianism in East and West, Jacob Boas provides a compelling narrative of the five-day congress through a series of short, semi-biographical portraits, or vignettes, of some of the key European intellectuals that took part... The book is exceptionally well written and well researched, drawing on an impressive variety of sources, both published and unpublished, in Russian, French, German, Dutch, English, and Spanish. What emerges is a captivating portrait of the state of European intellectual life in the 1930s.’ — Alastair Hemmens, Modern Language Review 113.3, July 2018, 636-37 (full text online)

Writing the Landscape: Exposing Nature in French Women's Fiction 1789–1815
Christie Margrave
Legenda (General Series) •23 April 2019

  • ‘The book is meticulously researched and packed with critical responses from a variety of different fields, showing Margrave’s interdisciplinary intentions. This book opens the door for yet more focused work to be carried out on this understudied yet highly formative period in French literary and social history.’ — Stacie Allan, Modern Language Review 115.2, 2020, 470-71 (full text online)
  • ‘Writing the Landscape’s strengths lie in its close literary analyses of lesser-known works by women... The book rightly calls our attention to a corpus of women’s writing that deserves more critical attention, and it renews our understanding of how - far from being insignificant green backdrops - landscape descriptions could serve as focal points within a novel.’ — Giulia Pacini, H-France 20, May 2018, no. 77
  • ‘Scholars of European Romanticism have almost entirely overlooked the influence of French women writers of the First Republic and First Empire. In reaction to this oversight, Margrave's excellent monograph resituates the dominant themes of French Romanticism, firstly, as developing earlier than the 1820s and, secondly, as much more than a male phenomenon... This well-researched and beautifully written book provides fresh contributions to the fields of Women's Studies and French Romanticism by demonstrating the vital importance of these largely forgotten women writers of the First Republic and First Empire.’ — Julianna Starr, Women in French Studies 28, 2020, 147-48 (full text online)
  • ‘Christie Margrave’s analysis of women writers’ feminist engagement with the Romantic vogue for natural landscape not only offers a fresh perspective on Romantic luminary Germaine de Staël; it also sheds light on the novels of Félicité de Genlis, Sophie Cottin, Barbara von Krüdener, and Adélaïde de Souza... This is an insightful, valuable, and timely study bound to inform and inspire future scholarship in French women’s writing of the Romantic era.’ — Laura Kirkley, French Studies 77.1, January 2023, 135-36 (full text online)

Ying Chen’s Fiction: An Aesthetics of Non-Belonging
Rosalind Silvester
Research Monographs in French Studies 57•28 September 2020

  • ‘A refreshingly original and in-depth contribution that should be enthusiastically welcomed not only by scholars working in the specialist field of Franco-Chinese studies, but also by those who are more broadly interested in contemporary Québec literature, Chinese diasporic literature, migrant writings, and transcultural studies... A strong, lucid, and convincing line of enquiry.’ — Shuangyi Li, Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies 12.1, Summer 2021, 16-17

Zola and the Art of Television: Adaptation, Recreation, Translation
Kate Griffiths
Transcript 3•28 September 2020

  • ‘There is a lot of good material in Zola and the Art of Television. Its readings of Zola’s novels and short stories, especially in relation to their adaptations, are fresh, detailed, and nuanced. Electing to address television adaptations rather than film brings more attention to this more under-researched form of adaptation.’ — Jonathan Evans, Translation and Literature 30, 2021, 243-48 (full text online)
  • ‘Griffiths breaks new ground here in two ways which she explains in detail in her introduction. First, her focus on television adaptations ends what she calls the “critical silence” (p. 7) in this area by challenging viewers’ and scholars’ tendency to underappreciate both the artistry and the critical significance of televisual adaptation. Secondly, Griffiths convincingly argues that a deep understanding of creative processes and practices can be gained from treating televisual rewritings of literary texts as translations rather than (or as well as) adaptations; for her, reading these televisual texts through the lens of various translation theories opens up extremely fruitful modes of interpretation and ultimately calls for a reconsideration of what televisual art is or could be. By challenging adaptation studies’ traditional resistance to translation theory, Griffiths’s book importantly goes some way to bridging the intellectual and disciplinary divide between literary studies and media studies... As well as’ — Hannah Thompson, H-France 21.190, October 2021, 190
  • ‘Through her judiciously selected corpus, her appropriation of adaptation theory, and her ambitious but cogently articulated arguments, Griffiths’s groundbreaking study succeeds in demonstrating how these adaptations encourage viewers to reflect on television’s own technological, aesthetic, ideological, and commercial metamorphoses. Furthermore, Griffiths clearly demonstrates that, by probing the relationship between art and contemporary society, television has simultaneously lent continuity to Zola’s goals and renewed relevance to his texts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.’ — Barry Nevin, French Studies online, 26 July 2022 (full text online)

The Philomena of Chrétien the Jew: The Semiotics of Evil
Peter Haidu, edited by Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner
Research Monographs in French Studies 59•28 September 2020