Translating Petrarch's Poetry: L’Aura del Petrarca from the Quattrocento to the 21st Century
Edited by Carole Birkan-Berz, Guillaume Coatalen and Thomas Vuong
Transcript 8•17 February 2020

  • ‘Ranging through five centuries of translations, adaptations and imitations of Petrarch, the father of Humanism, this transcultural, transdisciplinary study considers the echoes of this major figure, whose reach goes beyond borders, eras and literary genres to resonate singularly into our times and in our own resonating ears.’ — Robert Sheppard, Pages 16 September 2020
  • ‘Translating Petrarch’s Poetry is a must-read book for anybody interested in the spread of Petrarch’s poetry in the Western world (and beyond) throughout modernity. It collects very thorough essays dealing with this theme in always original and engaging manners from a variety of modern critical standpoints.’ — Enrico Minardi, Annali d'Italianistica 38, 2020, 455-459
  • ‘As its title suggests, this volume covers both “translating” in a conventional sense and freer, sometimes distanced, responses that are nevertheless redolent of Petrarch’s “aura” or distinctive atmosphere and of his portrayal of his beloved. By integrating a wide gamut of approaches on the part of academics from different disciplines and of poets, the collection of case studies presented here illustrates very effectively the endlessly imaginative ways in which Petrarch’s poetry has been transformed and repurposed across time.’ — Brian Richardson, Speculum 96.4, October 2021, 1153-54 (full text online)
  • ‘This collection of fifteen essays by scholars and writers from a range of countries brings to bear on Petrarch recent interest not only in translation as normally conceived but also in reformulations and fragmentations of the original and its appropriation in other media, and in the roles translations and other responses play and have played socially and culturally.’ — Peter Hainsworth, Modern Language Review 117.3, July 2022, 505-07 (full text online)

Prismatic Translation
Edited by Matthew Reynolds
Transcript 10•7 January 2020

  • ‘Prismatic Translation is a book of delights … there is unquestionably something here for everyone with an interest in translation, whether as an art form, an object of study, a field for radical experiments, or indeed all of the above.’ — Sarah Ekdawi, Σύγκριση 29, 2020, 162-168 (full text online)
  • ‘'Prismatic' is a potent and productive metaphor for what translation can do and be, and the chapters collected in Prismatic Translation prove it. .. Just as the best translations resolve the tensions between philology and poetry, or acceptability and adequacy, these papers mediate between the demands of narrow and broad definitions of literary translation, illuminating intricacies of both text and context.’ — Lucas Klein, Translation Studies 12 Oct 2020 (full text online)
  • ‘Imaginings of language, the mission of Creative Multilingualism, are the gifts of Prismatic Translation. They transform translation studies and make them immediately relevant to comparative literature by carving out a space for identifying untidy details, insertions, inventions, and anxieties which are initially felt in “a bristling of sense” but are now instrumental in the articulation of the various reading processes involving intercultural dialogues and exchanges.’ — Wen-chin Ouyang, Recherche littéraire/Literary Research 37, 2021, 351-55
  • ‘Resulting from a long-term collaboration among several scholars and from investigations at various conferences, mostly from 2015 onwards, this ample volume edited by Matthew Reynolds bears the mark of in-depth discussions about a topic that has eventually been present in the collective literary awareness, but which has also been exposed to many contradictory – or complementary – interpretations and approaches.’ — Metka Zupančič, CompLit 3, 2022, 249-51 (full text online)
  • ‘Prismatic Translation thus marks a new approach to translation that focuses on the creativity of translation. Differences between different translations reveal the creative dimension of human linguistic interaction. As a prism exudes white light into different colors of the rainbow, so translation activates the potential of the original to become the basis of different translations.’ — Leona Nikolaš, Primerjalna književnost 45.1, 2022, 211-16 (full text online)

The First English Translations of Molière: Drama in Flux 1663-1732
Suzanne Jones
Transcript 13•28 September 2020

The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
Jamie McKendrick
Transcript 17•28 September 2020

  • ‘This book might have been written for my pleasure. Many readers of this journal will surely feel the same.’ — Chris Miller, PN Review 28.3, January/February 2022
  • ‘There is a natural clemency at work, throughout the entire volume, which has nothing to do with fuzzy-mindedness – quite the contrary, but it means that McKendrick will never deliver the frenzied hatchet-job some poets (whom he admires) can execute, apparently with sangfroid. This intelligence – by definition an ironic intelligence in that it can simultaneously entertain different positions – is what makes him such a trustworthy guide. One feels also that humour, that saving resource, is always within reach... His astute use of quotation to illustrate a point is a fiduciary of sound judgement. Above all, Jamie McKendrick reminds us that there is no substitute for patient looking and listening. This close attention, this authentic love of the art, is rare in our day. These writings are to be prized.’ — Stephen Romer, The London Magazine February/March 2022, 77-84
  • ‘A welcome marker to remind us, if we needed reminding, of how much human beings need, and gain from, dialogue with other cultures and languages. The apparently foreign, as Jamie McKendrick demonstrates so well here, in fact shows us a threshold, a door.’ — Hilary Davies, Times Literary Supplement 19 May 2023, p. 8
  • ‘What Jamie McKendrick so finely details about Tom Lubbock’s English Graphic is an entirely apt description for his own collection of brief reviews, introductions, and essays, on literature and art: ‘The constraints of the form proved exceptionally viable and liberating for his procedures. Providing a “wiry outline”, the form itself allowed for wit, aperçu, mental calisthenics, provocation, aphorism, meditation and surprisingly sustained argument’.’ — George Kalogeris, Essays in Criticism 73.1, 2023, 130-31 (full text online)