Matthew Reynolds, ed., Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2023. Pp. 885. £53.95. ISBN 9781800648425.

Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages is certainly a colossal work, not only for its enormous size (the hardcopy is a 900-page volume), but above all for its scope and relevance to the study of the translations of Jane Eyre and, more generally, the reception of Charlotte Brontë's novel across languages and cultures from its publication in 1847 to the present day. The book is the result of the Prismatic Jane Eyre research project (2016-2023), led by Matthew Reynolds, who is also the main author and coordinator of this book aiming at 'redefining' Jane Eyre 'as a multilingual, transtemporal and nomadic work' (27) by dealing with a vast corpus of 618 translations in 68 languages, compiled by the participants in the project.

Plurality is one of the defining traits of Prismatic Jane Eyre. Plural are the voices that we find in it, as the book is co-authored by more than 20 scholars who approach the study of the novel and its multiple translations from different perspectives, considering different languages, contexts, and responses to Brontë's text. Various also are the contents of the book, which is marketed in both hardback and paperback and is freely accessible online too. It is structured in 8 chapters and 17 essays. The chapters, written by Reynolds, act as a guide and introduction to the essays, which each offer either case studies of the afterlives of Jane Eyre in specific languages and regions or close readings of the novel and its translations. Essays explore various aspects of the translations of Jane Eyre into Arabic (Yousif M. Qasmiyeh), French (Céline Sabiron, Léa Rychen), Spanish (Andrés Claro), Chinese (Yunte Huang), German (Mary Frank), Slovenian (Jernej Habjan), Estonian (Madli Kütt), and Russian (Eugenia Kelbert). The book also includes essays on the reception of Jane Eyre in India (Ulrich Timme Kragh and Abhishek Jain), Greece (Eleni Philippou), and Iran (Kayvan Tahmasebian and Rebecca Ruth Gould), as well as essays examining inaccuracies and silences, such as source-text variations in translation (Paola Gaudio) and the absence of translations into Swahili (Annmarie Drury). Furthermore, special attention is paid to the expression of passion and emotions across languages, a theme discussed one of Reynolds's chapters and in several essays on the language of emotions in the translations of the novel into Portuguese (Ana Teresa Marques dos Santos and Cláudia Pazos-Alonso), Danish (Ida Klitgård), and Italian (Paola Gaudio).

Essays and chapters are the core of the book, but Prismatic Jane Eyre is not just a collection of essays by several contributors-in fact, throughout the volume, emphasis is placed on the fact that they are not contributors but co-authors. The book is conceived as a collaborative and transmedial project, in which the contents of the printed book-which also includes a list of translations of Jane Eyre, arranged by language, and short biographies of some translators-are complemented by digital media. These consist of interactive digital maps created by Giovanni Pietro Vitali and trans-lingual textual animations with translations of selected quotations, which are all available online and can be accessed through hyperlinks and QR codes. This creates a sort of multimodal polyphony that effectively integrates digital techniques into rigorous research in the fields of literary history and translation.

In addition, the book benefits from methodological pluralism. It adopts a prismatic approach to the study of translation, also expounded by Reynolds (Prismatic Translation, 2019), which understands translation not as a channel through which a text produces an equivalent text in another language, but as a prism through which the text opens up endless possibilities and versions, which also have the potential to generate other re-creations and responses. Translation thus creates difference, and the book centres on the diverse and multiple 'Jane Eyres' that have emerged across languages, time, and space. Moreover, the analysis combines distant reading, as reflected in the compilation of the corpus of translations and the maps representing them, with collaborative and multi-lingual close reading, creating a model for literary analysis that can be applied to other texts that have circulated globally.

Prismatic Jane Eyre marks a milestone in the study of Charlotte Brontë's afterlives, being of special interest not only to Brontë and Victorian scholars, but also to those either working in comparative literature and literary translation or willing to introduce a transnational perspective to the study of literature. As such, the book can serve as a model and inspiration for scholars in the field of Romantic literature and culture, especially as transnational approaches to the study of Romanticism have received decided impetus in recent times.

Sara Medina Calzada, Universidad de Valladolid