Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

English-language commentary on some 20 writers with works published between 1965 and 1989. Includes biographical studies and criticism, both general and of particular titles. Each entry notes any non- English element in the cited work. See PA3024 for the overall series. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Over 600 moderately lengthy descriptive annotations covering six Brazilian and 17 Spanish-American fiction writers appear in this bibliography. Varying in length, each author entry includes English-language monographs and articles for biographical material and general criticism, and lists individual works most readily available in translation. To aid Anglophones, Brower specifies the language of titles and quotations cited in the text of the annotated work. The omission of page numbers for chapters in books and in collections reduces the volume's usefulness somewhat. A more serious problem is the author's indulgence in analytical overkill; he often includes as single entries separate chapters from the same full-length monograph, itself a separate entry. The Magill name, however, is bound to make this compilation a guaranteed staple for its intended undergraduate audience.-- Lawrence Ols zewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

According to the publisher, the bibliographic series of which this is a part was "prepared for high school and undergraduate students." For such users a few of the journal articles cited seem rather inappropriate, e.g., "Stalking the Oxen of the Sun and felling sacred cows: Joyce's Ulysses and Cabrera Infante's Tres tristes tigres." Although the compiler has apparently tried to exclude material that requires "extensive knowledge of certain types of literary analysis and theory," if the material is the only criticism available in English, or if it is "simply too important to exclude" it is listed. Thus this bibliography, no doubt destined to become a crib sheet for students in Spanish literature courses, will perhaps provide some delicious surprises for language teachers who peruse an undergraduate's learned discussion of "Time and futility in the novel El coronel no tiene quien le escriba." The general thrust seems to be provision of a selection of English-language criticism for what may be described as the current canon of Latin American authors (only a few of whom are read, in translation or otherwise, in the usual high school or undergraduate course). The basic method of compilation seems to be analyzing standard anthologies, with entries repeated under each author when an article discusses more than one. This gives a somewhat spurious bulk to the publication, but may be valuable in a day when library catalogs seldom include multiple analytical entries. Annotations are carefully descriptive, but only nominally critical (the favored words of evaluation are "interesting" and "solid"). Where demand for critical material in English is high, this work could save some searching, but should be used with care. -N. F. George, Kenyon College