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:

  • 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
  • Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis: Góngora, Camargo, Sor Juana — Luis Castellví Laukamp, ‘[E]l libro se presenta como un ensayo clave sobre los tres autores mencionados en el título […] una investigación insoslayable sobre tres grandes obras poéticas del siglo XVII a ambos lados del Atlántico.’ — Hector Ruiz Soto, Bulletin Hispanique 126.1, 2024, 344-49
  • A Gaping Wound: Mourning in Italian Poetry — Edited by Adele Bardazzi, Francesco Giusti, and Emanuela Tandello, ‘A significant and much-needed contribution to scholarship and promisingly opens new directions of research on mourning, a theme that in the past few decades has regained public attention — an unsurprising resurgence given its political implications and central role in our lives.’ — Simona Di Martino, Modern Language Review 119.3, July 2024, 419-21 (full text online)
  • Dante Beyond Borders: Contexts and Reception — Edited by Nick Havely and Jonathan Katz with Richard Cooper, ‘In its emphasis on global reception history as a quarry through which to discover the multicultural and transnational voice that the Florentine poet endeavoured to realize in his lifetime, Dante beyond Borders can be seen as a full-scale furtherance of the Oxford Handbook’s ideal [of a vision of Dante as liberated from the shackles of interpretative singularity].’ — Peerawat Chiaranunt, Modern Language Review 119.3, July 2024, 367-79 (full text online)
  • Dante and Petrarch in the Garden of Language — Francesca Southerden, ‘In sum, Southerden’s monograph is a nourishing read; it not only offers a series of sensitive close readings but is also particularly instructive on how one might judiciously apply the fruits of modern theory in the service of interpreting medieval literature — this latter becomes, in turn, a kind of ‘litmus test’ or mirror through which the value and insights of theory can be gauged in practice. From Southerden’s accomplishment readers and students of Dante and Petrarch will reap a large reward.’ — Peerawat Chiaranunt, Modern Language Review 119.3, July 2024, 367-79 (full text online)
  • Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante's Divine Comedy — Katherine Powlesland, ‘Medieval affective literature and modern technologies of virtual experience are conjoined in a reciprocal loop. This is without doubt a powerful pedagogy for students who may be better versed in interactive computer games than in the epistemologies of the Christian Middle Ages; indeed, it may usher them towards an authentic appreciation of the latter, just as the bookish medievalist could as well be persuaded into the opposite direction.’ — Peerawat Chiaranunt, Modern Language Review 119.3, July 2024, 367-79 (full text online)
  • Narrative Strategies for Participation in Dante's Divine Comedy — Katherine Powlesland, ‘A most engaging study on reading experiences of the Commedia and, while proposing the model of ‘first-person participation’ as a general one for any printed text, it also sheds (new) light on many Dantean narratological devices that expand scholarship through detailed and convincing arguments.’ — Dario Galassini, Bibliotheca Dantesca 6, 2023, 334-36
  • Hispanic Baroque Ekphrasis: Góngora, Camargo, Sor Juana — Luis Castellví Laukamp, ‘Desde luego, nos encontramos ante una obra de referencia de obligada consulta para el especialista en el estudio de la poesía del Siglo de Oro y la relación fraterna que mantienen literatura y artes en el periodo.’ — Adolfo R. Posada, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 99, 2022, 173-76
  • Standing at the Crossroads: Stories of Doubt in Renaissance Italy — Marco Faini, ‘Un libro dal quale si impara ad ogni pagina, e che fa vedere un insieme vario, molto più mosso di quello illustratoci dagli studi condotti con il taglio convenzionale.’ — Paolo Cherchi, Giornale storico della letteratura italiana 201, 2024, 144-47
  • Karoline von Günderrode: Philosophical Romantic — Joanna Raisbeck, ‘Günderrode’s intertwined literary practice and philosophical commitments reveal for Raisbeck a poetics that valorizes poetry as an epiphanic medium. Günderrode’s texts enact and offer a form of knowledge not found in theoretical tracts, Raisbeck suggests, and their serious consideration might counterbalance current approaches to Romanticism marked by an “over-commitment to philosophy.”’ — Claire Baldwin, Goethe Yearbook 31, 2024, 182-85 (full text online)