Michel Cartier, Danielle Elisseeff, Jacqueline Nivard, eds. Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie 1999 / Review of Bibliography in Sinology 1999. Paris: Editions de l'Ecole des Haute Etudes, 1999. xxv + 540 pp. 250 FF (paper), ISBN 978-2-7132-1343-4.

Reviewed by Robert E. Entenmann (Department of History, St. Olaf College.)
Published on H-Asia (March, 2000)

Review of Bibliography in Sinology, 1999

Last year H-Asia reviewed the 1998 edition of the Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie / Review of Bibliography in Sinology. As we then noted, American scholars may try to keep abreast of Chinese scholarship in our fields, but we less often read scholarship in other European languages or in Japanese, to our disadvantage. The Revue Bibliographique helps us keep up by providing reviews of European as well as American books and articles about China. It is less comprehensive in its coverage of scholarship in Chinese and Japanese, but still very helpful in that regard as well.

The 1999 volume carries abstracts of 534 books and articles, organized into eight broad categories: selected current events ("Points d'Actualite"), bibliography, history and social sciences, art and archeology, linguistics, literature, philosophy and religions, and science and technology. This year's "selected current events" section focuses on Taiwan, with reviews of nine books and five articles. The section on "Bibliography" includes new journals and newsletters, bibliographical reference works, collections of primary documents, and conference volumes. Roughly two-thirds of the entries are in French, the rest in English. They vary in length from a few sentences to a page or two. Most sections also include unannotated lists of Chinese articles ("Dans les revues chinoises"). Although the annotations vary in length and critical acumen, they are, on the whole, very useful.

In addition, there are six longer thematic essays: Michel Cartier, "La recherche sinologique a Taiwan et la taiwanisation des etudes chinoises;" Valerie Hansen, "The Silk Road Project: Reuniting Turfan's Scattered Treasures;" Thomas Kampen, "Socialist Sinology: East German China Studies from 1949 to 1990" (with a bibliography of one hundred books and dissertations); Vincent Goossaert, "Materiaux et recherches nouvelles sur les corporations chinoises urbains traditionnelles (des Ming a 1949);" Olivier Venture, "Nouvelles sources pour l'histoire de la Chine ancienne. Les publications de manuscrits depuis 1972;" and Anne Cheng, "Un classique qui n'en finit pas de faire parler de lui: les 'Entretiens' de Confucius. Un apercu des traductions du XXe siecle en langues europeennes." Abstracts of each of these essays are provided, both in English and French.

The 1999 Revue Bibliographique provides Chinese characters in the subject index. Cyrillic and Greek characters are provided for titles in Russian and Greek. (I noticed only one article in Greek, on China and Byzantium in the sixth and seventh centuries.) The bibliography is a superb reference work, both for the scope of its coverage and the usefulness of its annotations. Any college or university library serious about providing reference works on China should carry this series.

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Citation: Robert E. Entenmann. Review of Cartier, Michel; Elisseeff, Danielle; Nivard, Jacqueline, eds., Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie 1999 / Review of Bibliography in Sinology 1999. H-Asia, H-Net Reviews. March, 2000.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=3959

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