Discipline | Linguistics |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publication details | |
History | 1930–present |
Publisher | |
Standard abbreviations | |
ISO 4 | Year's Work Mod. Lang. Stud. |
Indexing | |
ISSN | 0084-4152 (print) 2222-4297 (web) |
Links | |
The Year's Work in Modern Language Studies (YWMLS) is an English-language evaluative bibliographical journal which appears annually, containing reports on new scholarship in the fields of European languages, linguistics, literature and film, except for English studies. The MLA Literary Research Guide says: "YWMLS is the single most comprehensive evaluative survey of scholarship on European and Latin American languages and literatures. Taken together, the annual volumes offer an incomparable record of scholarly and critical trends as well as of the fluctuations of academic reputations of literary works and authors." [1]
YWMLS is divided into the following main parts:
These are subdivided into reports on individual languages and periods, such as "Early Medieval French Literature" or "French Literature 1945–1999". In total about 75 such surveys are written by scholars traditionally based mainly in Britain, but increasingly also around Europe and North America. The volume typically appears early in the second year after the survey year, so that for example volume 82, containing the report on 2020, was published in February 2022.
YWMLS first appeared in 1930, covering Medieval Latin, Italian Studies, French Studies, Hispanic studies (including Basque and Rumanian), Germanic Studies and Celtic Studies. There was a break during the war years, and volume 11 covers 1940–49. From volume 11 onwards, Scandinavian Studies and Slavonic Studies were included. The reports grew in length until volume 44 filled 1432 pages, after which page limits were introduced. Volume 76 (survey year 2014) has five sectional editors and 56 contributing editors. Over its first 76 volumes, YWMLS has generated some 70,000 pages of critical bibliography and indices.
For many years, the work was edited by Glanville Price and David Wells. In 1991, General Editorship passed to Peter Mayo, with separate sectional editors for each subject area. From 1997 till 2016 the general editor was Stephen Parkinson (Portuguese Studies, Oxford). The volumes were published by Oxford University Press, then later by Maney Publishing, and from volume 72, by the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). In 2016, YWMLS was purchased by Brill (Leiden), and the general editorship passed to Paul Scott (Kansas) and Graeme Dunphy (Würzburg). YWMLS is now also accessible on JSTOR.
YWMLS aims to balance as wide as possible a listing of new titles with critical evaluation of the most important. As the development of internet resources made it easier for scholars to find new titles, the need for comprehensive bibliographical listings waned somewhat, and the focus of the work became more strongly evaluative. Traditionally the contributors to YWMLS were scholars of Modern Languages at British universities, and there was a strong focus on British scholarship. However, since the beginning of the 21st century there have been a growing number of American and continental European contributors, and the focus has become more international.
Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. In older usage, especially British, philology is more general, covering comparative and historical linguistics.
René Wellek was a Czech-American comparative literary critic. Like Erich Auerbach, Wellek was an eminent product of the Central European philological tradition and was known as a vastly erudite and "fair-minded critic of critics."
The Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA) is a United Kingdom–based international organisation that aims to encourage and promote advanced study and research of humanities. It is most notable for producing the MHRA Style Guide.
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Winfred Philip Lehmann was an American linguist who specialized in historical, Germanic, and Indo-European linguistics. He was for many years a professor and head of departments for linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, and served as president of both the Linguistic Society of America and the Modern Language Association. Lehmann was also a pioneer in machine translation. He lectured a large number of future scholars at Austin, and was the author of several influential works on linguistics.
Roger Sherman Loomis (1887–1966) was an American scholar and one of the foremost authorities on medieval and Arthurian literature. Loomis is perhaps best known for showing the roots of Arthurian legend, in particular the Holy Grail, in native Celtic mythology.
Hector Munro Chadwick was an English philologist. Chadwick was the Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon and the founder and head of the Department for Anglo-Saxon and Kindred Studies at the University of Cambridge. Chadwick was well known for his encouragement of interdisciplinary research on Celts and Germanic peoples, and for his theories on the Heroic Age in the history of human societies. Chadwick was a tutor of many notable students and the author of numerous influential works in his fields of study. Much of his research and teaching was conducted in cooperation with his wife, former student and fellow Cambridge scholar Nora Kershaw.
Frederick (Noel) Wilse Bateson was an English literary scholar and critic.
Modern Language Review is the journal of the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA). It is one of the oldest journals in the field of modern languages. Founded in 1905, it has published more than 3,000 articles and 20,000 book reviews.
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Michael D. C. Drout is an American Professor of English and Director of the Center for the Study of the Medieval at Wheaton College. He is an author and editor specializing in Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, science fiction and fantasy, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Ursula K. Le Guin.
Brian Oliver Murdoch is a British philologist who is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Stirling. He specializes in the study of early Germanic and Celtic literature, on which he has authored and edited several influential works.
Edgar Ghislain Charles Polomé was a Belgian-American philologist and religious studies scholar. He specialized in Germanic and Indo-European studies and was active at the University of Texas at Austin for much of his career.
Leeds Studies in English was an annual academic journal dedicated to the study of medieval English, Old Norse-Icelandic, and Anglo-Norman language and literature. It was published by the School of English at the University of Leeds. In 2020, it was announced that Leeds Studies in English would merge with the Bulletin of International Medieval Research to become Leeds Medieval Studies, based in the Leeds Institute for Medieval Studies.
Ursula Miriam Dronke was an English medievalist and former Vigfússon Reader in Old Norse at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College. She also taught at the University of Munich and in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University.
Jan Ziolkowski occupies the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professorship of Medieval Latin at Harvard University. From 2007 to 2020 he served as Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. His scholarship has focused on the literature, especially in Latin, of the Middle Ages.
Archer Taylor was one of America's "foremost specialists in American and European folklore", with a special interest in cultural history, literature, proverbs, riddles and bibliography.
Nicola Anne Lulham Bradbury is an English literary critic, lecturer, editor, and author, specializing in the 19th century novel.