Recent Reviews of MHRA Books

MHRA books are regularly reviewed in scholarly journals across the world, and sometimes also in literary papers such as the Times Literary Supplement. From time to time, our books also appear in Europe’s newspapers, from The Independent and the Daily Telegraph to El Imparcial and Gazeta Shqiptare. The following excerpts are from the 20 most recently received reviews:

  • Dante’s Blood — Anne C. Leone, ‘Dante's Blood costituisce un contributo original e fertile allo studio della rappresentazione della corporeità nell'opera dantesca, offrendo chiavi di lettura interessanti e trasversali.’ — Elsina Caponetti, L'Alighieri 63.1, 2024, 144-47
  • Petrarch Commentary and Exegesis in Renaissance Italy and Beyond: Materiality, Paratexts and Interpretative Strategies — Edited by Guyda Armstrong, Simon A. Gilson and Federica Pich, ‘This volume is a very valuable resource and succeeds in addressing many lacunae in our knowledge of Petrarch' reception in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries and in revealing new areas for further study... I hope to see more studies like this one on Petrarch's vernacular poetry and its significant influence in the future.’ — Sarah Faggioli, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 543-46
  • Fragments, Genius and Madness: Masks and Mask-Making in the fin-de-siècle Imagination — Elisa Segnini, ‘In conclusion, Fragments, Genius and Madness provides valuable insights into fin-de-siècle mask-related discourses and their connection to the paradigm of regression. The book adopts a genuinely comparative perspective on the matter while drawing on more sectoral studies of the subject. Segnini shows an acute understanding of the cultural significance of each object by emphasising the range of meanings and practices associated with it.’ — Enrica Leydi, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 701-04
  • Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy — Eugenio Refini, ‘The significance and pervasiveness of the literary and theatrical genre of fables or moral dramas cannot be overstated in the context of theater studies, and this monograph addresses that gap while opening new and crucial lines of research. The author's insight into establishing a link between this rich dramaturgical-literary-iconographic world and the equally important moral dramaturgy of Northern Europe is noteworthy. The abundance of sources and the reconstruction of the historical context allow for an original exploration of the theatrical and literary form of 'drammi morali' which represents a significant contribution of this profound and original book.’ — Gianni Cicali, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 605-08
  • Dante’s Blood — Anne C. Leone, ‘An extraordinarily erudite, comprehensive, and insightful study of blood — real, symbolic, metaphorical in Dante's oeuvre. The very learned author demonstrates the many purposes of her investigation most effectively. She engages the reader from beginning to end. The bibliography is vast. Her style is eminently elegant. Of this study can be stated what can be said of very few books: from now on, no one can write on blood in Dante's oeuvre without first perusing Ann C. Leone's Dante's Blood.’ — Dino Cervigni, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 535-39
  • Spatial Plots: Virtuality and the Embodied Mind in Baricco, Camilleri and Calvino — Marzia Beltrami, ‘Beltrami skillfully navigates the willed confusion and ambiguity in the hall of mirrors that is Se una notte, showing how Calvino writes a book that, although read sequentially, manages to create a non-linearity in the reading experience whereby the reader shifts between textual levels and landscapes... For a book on a book full of voids, Beltrami's analysis is full of very concrete textual detail and important insights.’ — Elio Baldi, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 518-19
  • Italo Calvino and Japan: A Journey through the Shallow Depths of Signs — Claudia Dellacasa, ‘As the title shows, the book does not merely aim to uncover Calvino's Japan, or Calvino's (real and mental) travels in Japan, but offers a portrait of Calvino and Japan, whereby both parts of the title carry the same weight. All chapters shift from Calvino to Japan, offering a broad scope that includes Zen, Buddhist, and Taoist belief systems as well as Japanese architecture, gardens, art, and writing. Paying detailed attention to the explorations and ruminations that Calvino dedicated to the country, both through his well-stocked Japanese library and his travels to Japan in 1976, Dellacasa's volume provides intriguing philosophical, literary, and existential reflections that manage to avoid Manichean discussions in terms of black and white, wrong or right, East and West... There is little doubt that Dellacasa's volume enriches Calvino scholarship for its surprising, refreshing, and creatively precise outlook on the multifarious engagements of Calvino with human and non-human environments.’ — Elio Baldi, Annali d'Italianistica 42, 2024, 513-16
  • Stefan George: The Homosexual Imaginary — Peter Morgan, ‘A new departure for research into the ‘body poetic’ of modern German literature, and its combination of wide-ranging conceptual ambition and detailed, close-textual analysis is truly inspiring.’ — Christophe Fricker, Oxford German Studies 53.3, 379-81 (full text online)
  • Crossings: Essays on Poetry and Translation from Hölderlin to Jaccottet — Charlie Louth, ‘These essays promise, and deliver, a ‘strong involvement with the weave of the poem’... The close readings are beautiful, treating the poems themselves with precision and care. But Louth is also adept at giving just the right amount of context, which, rather than seeming finicky, comes across as an act of generosity towards the reader.’ — Nicola Thomas, Times Literary Supplement 4 October 2024, 25
  • Zola's Painters — Robert Lethbridge, ‘There could be no better-qualified a Zola scholar than Robert Lethbridge to take on this major appraisal of Émile Zola’s art criticism as a quintessential component in understanding the many figurations of artists across his fictional works... This inspiring book therefore raises the stakes for subject-defining academic criticism that fully accounts for and challenges ‘modern’ critical fashions.’ — Mary Orr, Forum for Modern Language Studies 60, July 2024, 403 (full text online)
  • Psychoanalysis, Ideology and Commitment in Italy 1945-1975: Edoardo Sanguineti, Ottiero Ottieri, Andrea Zanzotto — Alessandra Diazzi, ‘As Diazzi’s three case studies evince, the relationship between psychoanalysis and Italian culture can be more fruitfully understood in terms of reciprocal ‘diffraction’ than as a conflictual opposition. Diazzi creates a suitable environment for understanding the topic thanks to her ability to offer clear summaries of the sociocultural contexts in which the three authors worked.’ — Roberta Passaghe, Modern Language Review October 2024, 119.4, 572-74 (full text online)
  • Interpreting and Judging Petrarch’s Canzoniere in Early Modern Italy — Edited by Maiko Favaro, ‘Favaro’s edited volume [...] successfully contributes to enriching the body of scholarship on the reception of Petrarch’s vernacular poetry in the early modern period.’ — Niccolò Morelli, Modern Language Review October 2024, 119.4, 567-69 (full text online)
  • Staging the Soul: Allegorical Drama as Spiritual Practice in Baroque Italy — Eugenio Refini, ‘Refini’s Conclusion looks at the possible reasons why these plays have been forgotten. Glissenti’s works, like those of his contemporaries, are still largely undiscovered, and Refini’s research is based on the manuscript collection at the Marciana Library in Venice. The hope is that books such as Staging the Soul will contribute to the rediscovery of early modern Italian literature with a transnational perspective.’ — Valentina Mirabella, Modern Language Review October 2024, 119.4, 570-71 (full text online)
  • Contested Communities: Small, Minority and Minor Literatures in Europe — Edited by Kate Averis, Margaret Littler, and Godela Weiss-Sussex, ‘It is undeniable that Averis, Littler, and Weiss-Sussex have crafted a masterful piece of edited work that is coherent in its theoretical positioning and diverse in its methodology. It would be a mistake not to recognize how the careful editorial work does not just bring together some penetrating essays that would be of interest to the specialized reader, but also makes of Contested Communities the material representation of the Deleuzo-Guattarian rhizome that constitutes the theoretical cornerstone of the volume. This is a valuable text for researchers in the fields of European transnational literature and multilingualism.’ — Alice Flinta, Modern Language Review October 2024, 119.4, 550-52 (full text online)
  • Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Literature, Doctrine, Reality — Zygmunt G. Barański, ‘A majestic work that offers an insightful examination of medieval authors while also serving as an overview of Barański’s career as one of the most distinguished experts on Dante of the last decades.’ — Martina Franzini, Heliotropia 20, 2023
  • Chaos and the Clean Line: Writings on Franco-British Modernism — Stephen Romer, ‘The heroes of Modernism may be exemplary in their achievements rather than their political choices but I would happily lose the entire works of the relatively blameless Tennyson to conserve the much briefer poetic corpus of the ‘unpleasant’ Mr Eliot. Bunting’s declaration rings in our ears: ‘There are the Alps, fools!’ And Romer is their spry mountaineer, offering considerable pleasure in his own right.’ — Chris Miller, The Fortnightly Review August 2024
  • Classical Comedy 1508-1786: A Legacy from Italy and France — Richard Andrews, ‘In fact, the teasing scope of the title neatly encapsulates the central arguments and tensions of this wide-ranging, scholarly and approachable study. The book explores on the macro and micro levels scripted commedia erudita and its derivatives alongside unscripted and ‘popular’ professional comedy, with a focus on the various degrees of interpenetration of these two trends: first in Italy in the sixteenth century, then, with an innovative geographical and chronological sweep, in both Italy and France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries... Overall, one can have few quibbles with Andrews’s impressive account.’ — Ronnie Ferguson, Forum for Modern Language Studies 59.4, October 2023, 659–60 (full text online)
  • Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning — Edward Welch, ‘Offering a distinctive contribution to existing work on post-war spatial modernism, this book deserves a well-earned place alongside other leading works of cultural and intellectual history that reveal France’s enduring fascination with space as a critical concept.’ — Jules O'Dwyer, French Studies 78.2, 2024, 360-61 (full text online)
  • Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning — Edward Welch, ‘One memorable chapter of the book recounts the ambitious creation of the ville nouvelle of Cergy-Pontoise outside of Paris in the 1970s. With evocative section titles such as ‘The Strange Temporality of New Towns’, Welch tells this story through a masterful, interdisciplinary combination of planning archives, television footage, propagandizing state-sponsored newsletters, and close readings of Annie Ernaux’s Journal du dehors and Éric Rohmer’s Métamorphoses du paysage. Copious illustrations are furnished as well, immersing us in the look and feel of this ‘future’ city of the 1970s.’ — Joshua Armstrong, Irish Journal of French Studies 23, 2023, 174-75
  • Making Space in Post-War France: The Dreams, Realities and Aftermath of State Planning — Edward Welch, ‘Welch provides deep insight into the origins and ethics of France’s planning culture... Making Space in Post-War France illuminates the contradictions of France’s post-war modernization through cogent syntheses and fine-grained analyses of a wide range of documents crucially, Welch lends to visual and verbal representations (Godard, Besson, Depardon, Chibane, Rolin...) not only diagnostic value, but a fresh critical edge.’ — Derek Schilling, L'Esprit Créateur 64.1, Spring 2024, 161