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REVIEWS JOANNE A. RICE, comp. Middle English Romance: An Annotated Bibli­ ography, 1955-1985. Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, vol. 545. New York and London: Garland, 1987. Pp. xxxii, 626. $75.00. Because book reviews by their very nature tend to emphasize the faults of the subject work and often obscure the actual quality of the book and perhaps even the real opinion of the reviewer, I wish to preface this review with my overall assessment of this new bibliography. In Middle English Romance: An AnnotatedBibliography, 1955-1985, Dr.Joanne A. Rice has provided students of the medieval romance with a valuable and genuinely useful tool which willmostlikelyremain the standardreferenceworkuntil Dr.Rice herselfor some followersees fit to revise it. Nocollege library with holdings in the liberal arts can reasonably justify failure to acquire this valuablevolume, andmanymedievalistswouldbewellinstructedto obtain it for their own personal use. In her new bibliography, Rice includes all the romances, both verse and prose, listed in Fascicle 1 of A Manual ofthe Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, with the general exception of the ballads. Treating the verse and prose romances in separate sections of her book, Rice follows the formula of listing each article, etc. and provides an annotation, "except in cases where the title was self-explanatory" (p. xiii), but there are few of these. When citing a book, she provides a copy of the table of contents, with comments on selected chapters. Cross references are numerous and quite useful throughout. Rice's criteria for inclusion of secondary material is publication since 1955 and the possession of at least two consecutive pages on the particular romance being treated. Chaucer and Malory are omitted, being fully handled elsewhere, and listings for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are limited to publications after 1977 for a similar reason. For pre-1955 material, one is directed to Severs' Manual which unfortunately is not annotated. This restriction is no great drawback, however, because Rice does list all editions, and the bulk of studies in ME Romance is relatively recent. Even so, some of the romances remain almost untouched as a number of stark, nearly blank pages makes clear visually-a physical feature which may prove a convenience to the student looking for some­ thing obscure to write about or a "safe" dissertation topic. He can literally tell at a glance. The faults of Middle English Romance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1955-1985 are generic for such a work. Obviously, the book is already two 187 STIJDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER years out of date, and one hopes a series of revisions of this volume are planned to reduce the problem. More serious and more avoidable are the annotations which say virtually nothing: Her note for Knighthood in Medieval Literature ed. by W. T. H. Jackson reads: "Includes six articles dealing with knighthood in literature." Her comment is actually less specific than the title itself. In places like this, Rice should either list and comment appropriately on the articles or remember her policy of not elaborating on worksthecontentof which ismanifest in thetitle. Similarly, her practice of flatly listing the table of contents of certain books is one which is often annoying. A briefparagraphabout the book with references to chapters ofparticular interest often wouldbe more useful and relieve the reader ofthe lurking suspicion that the bibliographer has resorted to this practice simply as a means of avoiding actually reading the book in question. A less "generic" fault is her policy of not listing translations of the romances. This practice seems difficult to justify in a book which should be intended to be useful to as manystudents as possible. Studentsare going to find translations anyway wherever possible if only to double-check their own readings; and, besides, there aren't a great manytranslationsavailable for any but the most universally acclaimed romances. Also, I wish Rice had not separated the verse and prose romances, but instead treated them together as the Manual does, facilitating comparison of works in the same general grouping or translated from a common original. Such a method would also improve the utility of the table of contents by enabling the bibliographer to separate all of the introductory matter at...

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