The ancestors of modern literary bibliography in France are such works as Sorel's Bibliothèque française, Baillet's Jugements des savants, and Goujet's Bibliothèque française, as well as the scholarly work of the Maurists. The 19th and 20th c. have seen a vast and rather intimidating increase in such publications, devoted not only to French literature as a whole, but to genres, periods, and authors. The present entry aims simply to list some of the most helpful general works currently in use.
Two useful brief guides to the field are the Manuel bibliographique des études littéraires (1982) of B. Beugnot and J.-M. Moureaux and French Language and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography (1989), by F. Bassan, D. C. Spinelli, and H. A. Sullivan. For a full-length critical bibliography (now rather outdated in places), see the excellent A Critical Bibliography of French Literature (1947- ) under the general editorship of D. C. Cabeen, J. Brody, and R. A. Brooks. Simple listings of titles of both primary and secondary material are given in G. Lanson's Manuel bibliographique de la littérature française moderne (1909-14), a companion volume to his history of French literature, and this work is continued for the 16th to 18th c. in J. Giraud's Manuel de bibliographie littéraire (1921-55).
Much fuller listings, alphabetically arranged and covering critical writing up to 1950-60, are contained in the series of bibliographies by A. Cioranescu, Bibliographie de littérature française du 16e siècle (1959), Bibliographie de littérature française du 17e siècle (1965-7), and Bibliographie de littérature française du 18e siècle (1969-70). For the Middle Ages,
For other francophone countries, some titles will be found in the entries for the different areas.
All such works go out of date and need to be supplemented by annual bibliographies. The four main ones are: R. Rancœur, Bibliographie de la littérature française, published since 1951 in the Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France; the Bibliographie der französischer Literaturwissenschaft, founded by O. Klapp in 1956; and the relevant sections of The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies, a selective and critical bibliography published in Britain by the Modern Humanities Research Association, and of the Modern Language Association's International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures. For specific periods, see in particular the annual Bibliographie internationale de l'humanisme et de la Renaissance and French XX (formerly French VII), a bibliography of 20th-c. French literature.
An important development of the 1980s and 1990s is the computerized bibliographical database. The essential one is the CD-ROM version of the MLA International Bibliography, covering the period since 1981 and regularly updated. See also, for example, the database on Maghrebian writing LIMAG 2, produced in Paris by the Coordination Internationale des Chercheurs sur les Littératures Maghrébines.
[Peter France]
