Spanish golden age drama: an annotated bibliography of United States doctoral dissertations, 1899-1992; with a supplement of non-United States dissertations

Abstract

Spanish Golden Age Drama: An Annotated Bibliography of United States Doctoral Dissertations, 1899-1992 with a Supplement of Non-United States Dissertations/El teatro del Siglo de Oro: Bibliografia comentada de tesis doctorales estadounidenses 18991992 con una lista complementaria de tesis de varios otros paises. By John J. Reynolds and Szilvia E. Szmuk. New York: MLA of America, 1998. vi+573 pages. Bibliografia anotada de estudios sobre recepcidn de la cultura francesa en Espana (siglos xw-xx). By Francisco Lafarga. la. ed. Barcelona: PPU, 1998. 293 pages. Bibliographie Critique de la Litterature Espagnole en France Au xw.re Siecle: Presence et influence. By Jose Manuel Losada Goya. Geneve: Droz, 1999. 670 pages. In an age when seemingly reasonable people talk about the demise of the book, it is widely assumed that print bibliographies are anachronisms. Any moderately sophisticated student with access to online databases can create his/her own customized bibliography in minutes. Thus, any bibliography to justify its printing must offer something beyond a string of citations. three considered here, to varying degrees, easily meet that criterion. They are the products of both careful research and knowledgeable scholarship, and each adds value to the basic bibliography with enhancements, such as annotations and multiple and detailed indexes. Spanish Golden Age Drama is an obvious example of the type of bibliography that might seem unnecessary in the age of electronic searching. Indeed, the issue is raised in the Foreword by a onetime director of University Microfilms, the publisher of Dissertation Abstracts. While David J. Billick's argument that the growth of comprehensive electronic databases has made detailed printed bibliographies more necessary than ever is not fully persuasive, it is clearly true that Reynolds and Szmuk have produced something that goes beyond what is currently available in online format. book includes foreign, as well as U.S. dissertations, and-because some institutions joined the Dissertation Abstracts system late-about 30% of the U.S. group is not included in Dissertation Abstracts or Dissertation Abstracts International (DA and DAI numbers are provided as part of the bibliographic information). annotations are generally brief but helpful. Each citation provides the name of the dissertation adviser, when available, which allows one to trace the thread of a scholar's influence through his/her students and their students, though, as the editors note in their entertaining Preface, the extent of an author's debt to his/her dissertation director varies widely. Every record also contains other publications by the author that are related to the dissertation topic. number of related publications ranges to as many as ten for individual authors. When a dissertation is not cited in Dissertation Abstracts, another source is usually provided. arrangement of the Bibliography follows the same form the editors use in their annual comedia compilation in the Bulletin of the Comediantes: first, general works about the period; then, works about Golden Age theater; and, finally, alphabetically arranged works about specific authors. subject organization is repeated for the non-U.S. dissertations in a section designated a supplement, even though it includes a substantial number of records, 616, compared to the first part's 853. Because some dissertation records are repeated (e.g., dissertations about two or more playwrights), the actual numbers of dissertations are 577 and 784. substantial introductory section, besides Billick's brief comments, includes Karen Anderson's Prologue, The American PhD Rooted in European Tradition, which provides a brief history of the evolution of the U. …