James L. Harner

“ The first division lists general guides to Italian literature, bibliographies, journals, collections and anthologies, encyclopedias and dictionaries, and literary histories. The remaining divisions consist of essay overviews accompanied by selective bibliographies on literary criticism and philology (with discussions of textual criticism, criticism, literary history, and metrics) ; linguistics and stylistics (language, grammar, and vocabulary; the Italian language; and the history of language in Italy) ; literary periods or movements; and 30 major authors. Indexed by persons. ”

“ Few entries are annotated, but each division, section, and subsection is preceded by a brief overview of reference works. Two indexes: scholars (at the end of the book) ; subjects (at the beginning) . This is the fullest guide to reference works on French literature, but users would benefit from more annotations. ”

“ Entries are organized alphabetically by author in 15 classified divisions: bibliographies and reference works; literary history and criticism; history and influence of the classical tradition; transmission of the classics (including sections on books and libraries, paleography, and textual criticism) ; language and style; metrics, song, and music; epigraphy; political and cultural history; numismatics; art and archaeology; religion, mythology, and magic; philosophy; science and technology; teaching aids ”

“ The international scope and impressive degree of coverage make this the indispensable guide to scholarship on Greek and Latin language and literature to c. AD 800.
APh, which offers the best access to the content of the printed volumes, also includes interim records. In the basic search screen, users can search by Modern Author (i.e., document author) , full text, Ancient Authors, or subjects; Advanced Search allows users to combine the preceding fields with ones for publisher, title, series title, journal title, reviews by journal, and reviewer and to restrict a search by language and date. ”

“ French studies takes 13 essays whereas Swedish studies needs only two.
The necessarily selective coverage depends on availability of material, individual contributors, the extent of coverage in other bibliographies, and—since vol. 45 (for 1983) —the number of pages allocated by the editors to a chapter. As in Year’s Work in English Studies (G330) , the quality and objectivity of individual essays vary depending on the contributor (s) , but most (until the mid-1990s) attempt judicious evaluations of the significant scholarship. ”

“ Entries are accompanied by descriptive annotations (predominantly in French but also in English, Italian, and German) and citations to reviews. The type and number of indexes vary, with recent volumes providing five: subject headings; names from antiquity; names of authors and others since the Middle Ages; places; scholars. ”

“ A survey and bibliography of Latin-language works written between 1300 and 1990. Vol. 1 offers a country-by-country history of Neo-Latin literature; each chapter concludes with a selective list of bibliographies, general works, cultural and literary histories, studies of genres, anthologies, and journals. Vol. 2 provides selective bibliographies of genres, language and style, prosody and metrics, texts and editions, and the development of Neo-Latin studies. Five indexes in each volume: persons; places ”

“ Users who wish to select multiple records for exporting must do so from the results page. Although journal acronyms and abbreviations are expanded in mouse-over boxes in a Web browser, they are not expanded in downloaded, e-mailed, or printed records; see List of Journal Abbreviations on the home page for journals currently indexed. ”