Books published by Legenda

In the twentieth century, various Sephardic authors from the former Yugoslavia took upon themselves the task of revitalising different forms of Judeo-Spanish oral tradition such as narrative, songs or ballads.

Petrarch is arguably the most influential poet in Western culture. Throughout the centuries, other poets have imitated him or drawn inspiration from what they know of his work: his poetry has been discussed, set to music, illustrated, fictionalized, parodied, cannibalized. Furthermore, through translations of Petrarch, the sonnet has soared across Europe, remodelling its poetic landscape - so much so that even the most avant-garde poetry still finds itself in debt to the author of the Canzoniere.Ranging through five centuries of translations, adaptations and imitations of the father of Humanism, this transcultural, transdisciplinary study considers the echoes of a major figure, whose reach goes beyond borders and eras to resonate singularly into our times.Carole Birkan-Berz is Senior Lecturer in Translation and Literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle, Guillaume Coatalen Senior Lecturer in Early Modern English Literature at the University of Cergy-Pontoise and Thomas Vuong holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University Paris-13 (Sorbonne-Paris-Cité).

Are our actions and values freely chosen, or imposed on us by a complex interplay of unconscious motivations, culture, history, institutions and the pressure of others? Is the human subject a self-defining, self-creating autonomous agent, or merely the product or plaything of forces beyond its control? Are other people allies in the project to realize freedom, or unmovable obstacles who stand in our way? If we knew how to embrace freedom, would it be a blessing or a curse, a joyous epiphany or a crushing burden? To what extent does our finite mortal existence condition and limit our freedom? The work of Christina Howells has been instrumental in demonstrating how Continental thought has explored these questions in ways which are intellectually rigorous and humanly compelling. In this volume, some of her colleagues and former students build upon her work by addressing the situation of 'theory' today - literary, political, psychoanalytic, aesthetic and philosophical - in its relation to freedom and subjectivity. The volume includes a number of new essays on each of Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Jean-Luc Nancy (b. 1940), as well as essays on a range of other theorists. Taken together, the volume's essays show how the modern theorising subject may be both the source and the product of its endeavour to understand its place in the human, mortal world.Oliver Davis is Reader in French Studies at Warwick University. Colin Davis is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. Christina Howells is Professor of French and Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.