English 298

A SELECTIVE GUIDE TO LIBRARY RESOURCES FOR
English 298 - Introduction to Literary Study
In the Southern Oregon University Hannon Library

compiled by Deborah Hollens

 

Finding Literary Criticism in Books

Other Databases Sometimes Useful for Literary Research

Book-length Bibliographies on Individual Authors

The Gale Guides to Literary Criticism
and online Literary Index

 

Literary Journals on the Web

 

 

Finding Literary Criticism in Books

SOU Online Catalog

Books of criticism can be found by choosing "Subjects" in the SOU Hannon Library Catalog and typing the poet's or novelist's last name and first name. Alternatively, you can choose "Keywords" and type the author's last name (if it is unusual) or first and last name. You can find many hidden books this way because "Keywords" searches titles, subjects, and contents notes. However, typically you will also pull up some material unrelated to your topic. But, if you have patience, "Keywords" is the way to find all material related to your topic.

Summit: Orbis Cascade Alliance Catalog

Search Summit for books available from the ORBIS consortium. Summit is a library catalog that combines information from 33 academic libraries in Oregon and Washington into a single unified database. Well over 8.8 million titles representing 27.8 million books, sound recordings, films, videos, and more have come to Summit from the catalogs of participating Pacific Northwest academic libraries.

WORLDCAT

Worldcat is a database that contains over 100 million records for materials cataloged in thousands of libraries all over the world. It is the database to use to find all books and other media on a subject. A new record is added to Worldcat every 10 seconds. Records are in 400 languages and represent 8 formats.

USING GOOGLE BOOKS

Google Books is a project to digitize the collections of several major libraries. It shows users information about a book, and often a few sentences to display a search term in context. The project also allows publishers and authors to submit their books for inclusion in the Google Books search results.

Each book listed includes basic bibliographic data like title, author, publication date, length and subject. You will find references to other books, chapter titles and a list of related books. For many books you will see a link to information on libraries where you can borrow that title, including the SOU Hannon Library.

Google Books has all kinds of potential for the researcher. One can enter a book title in Google Books and discover detailed contents notes, sometimes the full text of the index and small parts of the book. Then you can check the Hannon Library Catalog and Summit to see if you can obtain that book. Or you can enter keywords to find specific ideas in Google Books' digital content.

Journal Articles

There are a hundreds of academic journals that specialize in literary criticism. The following sources are all excellent subject guides to literary criticism. Journal citations found in these sources can be located in the SOU Library by looking in the List of Journals at SOU from the homepage of the Library.

Ebsco Academic Search Complete

Academic Search Complete is an online index,found by title or subject, "English and Literature," from the library menus. It has indexing for several thousand academic journals and also contains full text for many of the articles it indexes. Search in keyword, combining your author and part of the title of your work, eg., Morrison and Beloved or Steinbeck and Grapes.

Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated

An online database that retrieves full-text biographies from Current Biography and other specialized world-wide biographical reference works about famous persons in various fields. Much biographical and critical information about authors is available here. Enter your author's name, ex., "Steinbeck, John," and you will find a variety of critical material.

MLA International Bibliography

MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures.

New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1969- . Available by title or by subject under "English and Literature" from Library menus.

The MLA Bibliography is the single most important source for articles and books on the languages and literatures of the world-English, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. It also covers folklore, including folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems; linguistics and language materials, including history, theory, and translation; literary theory and criticism; dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater); history of printing and publishing; and teaching of literature, language, and rhetoric and composition. From 1922 through 1955 it was part of the June issue of PMLA (Publications of the Modern Language Association) and it indexed only the work of American critics. In 1963 it emerged as a separate publication and began covering all nationalities. It has progressively indexed more scholarship in more national literatures until it has grown to be the comprehensive and massive source it is today, indexing more than 4,400 journals and books from 1,000 publishers-over 1.8 million citations. Available online from 1926 to the present.

Book Reviews

To find book reviews of a novel (that is, critical reception of a work at the time it was published) you can use the following three sources:

Book Review Digest. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1906-2005. (Ref. Z 1219/.C96)

You can also use Academic Search Complete and the MLA Bibliography to locate book reviews

ABELL

Modern Humanities Research Association. Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920- . Annual. (We hold vols.1968--2002 ). (Ref. PE 1/A3x)

This bibliography is the British counterpart of the MLA Bibliography. It is an excellent index to journal articles, books, essays, dissertations, and reviews of British, American, and Commonwealth language and literature. It covers only English language works. It includes British dissertations and indexes many journals and books that the MLA Bibliography does not, so it is important to use both sources when researching a literature topic in English. We do not hold this bibliography ONLINE. You must use the paper volumes.

ALS

American Literary Scholarship: An Annual. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1963-2003 . (These volumes are not in the reference area! They are on the 3rd floor in the stacks (PS 3 /A47)

A selective bibliography of the most important American literary criticism of the year divided into chapters on Emerson and Thoreau, Hawthorne, Poe, Melville, Whitman and Dickinson, Twain, James, Pound and Eliot, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Part 2 contains all the other more minor authors and material on themes and general fiction of the periods. The long bibliographical essays written by scholars in the field cover books and journal articles and are the best way of keeping up with the best in American literary criticism. This bibliography is NOT ONLINE at Hannon Library.

 

Other Databases Sometimes Useful for Literary Research

ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center)

ERIC provides access to education literature and resources. Provides full text of more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information and citations and abstracts from over 1,000 educational and education-related journals. It is excellent for articles on how to teach literature.

Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection

Retrieves citations and full-text for journals covering topics such as emotional and behavioral characteristics, psychiatry and psychology, mental processes, anthropology, etc.

PsychInfo

Retrieves citations to articles, some in full-text, from selected scholarly journals in psychology and related fields, including communications, psycholinguistics and behavioral aspects of law, business, and medicine.

 

Book-length Bibliographies on Individual Authors

Bibliographies of the criticism of individual authors can be found in the online book catalog under "Keywords." Type the author's name and the word, "bibliography," eg., "Austen and bibliography."

Examples:

Gonzalez, Nelly S. Bibliographic Guide to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1992-2002. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003 (PQ 8180.17 .A73 G662 2003)

Joshi, S. T. Gore Vidal: a Comprehensive Bibliography. Lanham, MD : Scarecrow Press, 2007.
(PS 3543 .I26 .J67 2007)

Lambdin, Laura and Robert Lambdin. A Companion to Jane Austen Studies. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000 (PR 4037 .C66 2000)

Mazur, Carol. Alice Munro: an Annotated Bibliography of Works and Criticism. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2007. (PR 9199.3 .M8 M39 2007)

Neil, Scott R. Flannery O'Connor : an Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism. Milledgeville, GA: Timberlane Books, c2002 ( PS 3565 .C57 Z857 2002)

Roberts, John Richard. John Donne : an Annotated Bibliography of Modern Criticism, 1979-1995. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004. (PR 2248 .R625 2004)

Sutton, Marilyn, ed.. Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale: an Annotated Bibliography, 1900 to 1995. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. (PR 1868 .P3 S88x 2000)

Weyant, Nancy S. Elizabeth Gaskell: An Annotated Guide to English Language Sources, 1992-2001. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004. (PR 4711 .W494 2004)

Gale Guides to Literary Criticism

The following six sets contain reprints of criticism from books and literary journals arranged in chronological order. Consult the cumulative indexes for each set to ascertain which volumes contain the author or title in which you are interested, or go to Literary Index for an online index to the sets. The entries will give you a great historical overview of much of the major criticism on important writers. Each entry is accompanied by an additional bibliography of criticism with brief annotations.

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Edited by Laurie L. Harris. Detroit: Gale, 1981- . (Library holds 74 vols.) (Ref. PN 761/N5)

Twentieth Century Literary Criticism. Edited by Sharon K. Hall. Detroit: Gale, 1978- . (Library holds 63 vols.) Covers authors, 1900-1960. (Ref. PN 771/.T8x)

Contemporary Literary Criticism. Edited by Sharon R. Gunton. Detroit, Gale, 1973- . (Library holds 117 vols.).

Covers authors living or deceased after 1959. (Ref. PN 771/.C59)

Short Story Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Short Fiction Writers. Detroit: Gale, 1988- . (We hold 32 volumes of this continuing series) (Ref. PN 3373 / .S386)

Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature. Detroit: Gale, 1991- . (We hold 24 volumes of this series.) (Ref. PN 1010 P499)

Using the Internet

Evaluating Web Pages (UC Berkeley Library)

Some Great Websites for Full-text Books

Classic literature, non-fiction, short stories, plays, poetry and some reference works:

Bartleby.com

Bibliomania also has some great study guides!

Project Gutenberg

Credible Internet Directories Useful for English Literature

All of the following have been well reviewed:

Best Information on the Net--English (St. Ambrose University)

Literary Resources on the Net (a professor at Rutgers)

Literature Resources (MIT Libraries)

Literary History.com
"Begun in 1998, this index to free Internet articles on English and American literature is convenient and useful for students, scholars, writers, teachers, reading groups, and general readers. All links lead directly to articles meeting academic standards. " (from NYPublic Library "Best of Reference 2003."

Internet Public Library: Online Literary Criticism Collection from the Univ. of Michigan. School of Information
Funded by the Kellogg Foundation The IPL Online Literary Criticism Collection contains critical and biographical Web sites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by literary period.

Librarians Index to the Internet--Literature and Books
Funded by the Library of California through the Library of California Board.

**VOICE OF THE SHUTTLE: Web Page for Humanities Research (from the Univ. of California Santa Barbara) ** Always considered the place to look first. However, many of the links don't work.

Open Directory Project: Literature
"Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors....ODP is hosted and administered by Netscape Communication Corporation." This is an excellent website for quick information about authors, movement, genres, etc.

LitLinks
Sponsored by Bedford/St. Martin's, a commercial publisher, LitLinks is a great compilation of literature links.

Oxford Reference Online Premium (List of Links for Literature)
This selection of websites has been chosen by Oxford University Press to accompany their online reference works. Browse the alphabetical list or chose the links for the Oxford Companion that interests you.

 

Examples of More Specific Websites

Modern American Poetry
"A comprehensive learning environment and scholarly forum for the study of modern American poetry" created and maintained by the Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

PAL: Perspectives in American Literature
A great website from Cal State Stanislaus, PAL is a collection of web pages on over 400 American authors orgainzed alphabetically and by periods. Links to credible web sites, lists of primary and secondary works and sometimes student papers.

The Victorian Web
"A project funded by the University Scholars Program (an honors program), National University of Singapore."

Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet
An award winning site (Palomar College, San Marcos, California)

Geoffrey Chaucer
Harvard's Chaucer site provides introductory and critical articles relating to The Canterbury Tales other more general medieval topics.

 

Literary Journals on the Web

Infomine: Search Electronic Journals
From this page at the University of California, Riverside, you can limit your search to "Literature," then to "Free" Resource Access, and Resource Types, "Electronic Journals." This search will provide you access to some full text literary journals on the Web. Each journal has its own very idiosyncratic way of providing the information. Some have indexes; some do not. Some of these links are just frustrating! Not all of them are actual journals, even though they are supposed to be!

DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. This link will take you to 140 scholarly journals in languages and literature.

FindArticles.com
This is a free commercial internet index to articles. Most of the full text is NOT free, but a good deal is. It is possible to find some excellent full-text criticism here, but you will find much that is not useful. Worth a try if you are out of options. Be sure to limit to "Free Articles Only" in the drop down menu at the top of the page.

 

Exploring Reference Works

Biographical/ Critical Handbooks and Encyclopedias
in the Reference Area and Online

All of the following reference sets contain a good deal of literary criticism blended with a lengthy biographical essay on the author. Look for lists of primary works and also lists of criticism and scholarship at the end of most of the essays.

Oxford Reference Online
Nineteen fully-indexed, cross-searchable dictionaries, language and literature reference works published by Oxford University Press. This is a terrific place to quickly find biographical and critical information in full text. Search authors, literary terms, places, etc.

African American Writers. New York: Scribner's, 1991. (Ref. PS 153 .N5 A344 1991)

American Writers; A Collection of Literary Biographies. 12 vols. New York: Scribner, 1974-2001 . (Ref. PS 129 /A55)

British Writers; A Collection of Literary Biographies. Edited by Ian Scott-Kilvert. New York: Scribner's, 1979--1999. 14 vols. (Ref. PR 85 /B688 and suppl.)

European Writers. Ed. by W.T.H. Jackson. New York: Scribner, 1983- . 14 vols. (Ref. PN 501/ E9 1983)

Dictionary of Literary Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1978- . (The library holds about 180 vols. of this set. Ref. PN 451/D5x) A cumulative index to the entire set is usually at the back of every volume.

Modern American Women Writers. New York: Scribner's, 1991. (Ref. PS 151 .M54 1991)

Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature. New York : Oxford University Press, 2004. (ONLINE)

Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature. New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2006. (ONLINE)

Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. New York : Oxford University Press, 2005 (ONLINE)

 

Examples of Useful Reference Handbooks for Literature

Or, "Just what is an iamb anyway?"

The following books are available in the Reference section of the Hannon Library (1st floor):

Adamson, Lynda G. Thematic Guide to the American Novel. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. (Ref. PS 373 .A33 2002)

Brown, Lois. The Encyclopedia of the Harlem Literary Renaissance. New York : Facts On File, 2006. (Ref. PS153.N5 B675 2006)

Burt, Richard. Shakespeares After Shakespeare : an Encyclopedia of the Bard in Mass Media and Popular Culture. Westport, Conn. : Greenwood Press, 2007 (Ref. PR 2880.A1 S48 2007) 2 vols.

Drabble, Margaret. Oxford Companion to English Literature. New York: Oxford, 2000. (Ref. PR 19/.D73 2000)

Ferber, Michael. A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. New York: Cambridge Universitiy Press, 2007. (Ref. PN 56.S9 F47 2007)

Haralson, Eric L. Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Twentieth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. (Ref. PS 323.5 .E53 2001)

Hawley, John C. Encyclopedia of Postcolonial Studies. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001. (Ref. PN 849/.U43/ E53/ 2001)

Hunt, Peter. International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature. New York : Routledge, 2004. (Ref. PN1008.5 .I57 2004)

International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. New York : Oxford University Press, 2003 (ONLINE)

McClinton-Temple, Jennifer and Alan Velie, eds. Encyclopedia of American Indian Literature. New York : Facts on File, 2007. (Ref. PS 153/.I52 / E53 /2007)

Moss, Joyce and George Wilson, eds. Literature and Its Times : Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events that Influenced Them. Detroit : Gale, 1997. 7 vols. (Ref. PN 50 .L574 1997)

Oh, Seiwoong. Encyclopedia of Asian-American literature. New York : Facts On File, 2007. (Ref. PS 153 .A84 O37 2007 

Whitson, Kathy. Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2004 (Ref. PN 471 .W455 2004)

And many, many more.....

Literary Theory

Galens, David, ed. Literary Movements for Students: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Literary Movements. 2 vols. Detroit: Gale, 2002 (Ref. PN 597/.L58 2002)

Groden, Michael, Martin Kreiswirth and Imre Szeman. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005. (Ref. PN 81/ J554 2005)

Hawthorn, Jeremy. A Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory. 4th ed. New York : Arnold, 2000
(Ref. PN 44.5 .H37 2000)

Henderson, Helene and Jay P. Pederson, eds. Twentieth-century Literary Movements Dictionary : a Compendium to More than 500 Literary, Critical, and Theatrical Movements, Schools, and Groups from More Than 80 Nations... Detroit, Mich. : Omnigraphics, 2000. (Ref. PN597 .T94 2000)

Murray, Chris, ed. Encyclopedia of Literary Critics and Criticism. 2 vols. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1999. (Ref. PN 75 .E53 1999)

Quinn, Edward. A Dictionary of Literary and Thematic Terms. New York: Facts on File, 1999. ( Ref. PN 44.5 .Q56 1999)

Poetry

Burns, Allan. Thematic Guide to American Poetry. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002 (Ref. PS 303 .B87 2002)

Glancy, Ruth. Thematic Guide to British Poetry. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2002. (Ref. PR 502 .G55 2002)

Myers, Jack and Don C. Wukasch. Dictionary of Poetic Terms. Denton: University of North Texas, 2003. (Ref. PN 1042/M93/ 2003)

Haralson, Eric L. Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Twentieth Century. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. (Ref. PS 323.5/ .E53/ 2001)

Important Basic Bibliographical Guide

for the Study of Literature in English

Harner, James L. Literary Research Guide: an Annotated Listing of Reference Sources in English Literary Studies. New York: Modern Language Association, 2008. (Ref. PR 83/.H34/2008)

Harner's Guide selectively lists sources for literary research---handbooks, bibliographies, encyclopedias, guides, etc., and subdivides them by national literature and periods. Includes URLs for resources available online as well as print.

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MLA Citation Help!

Modern Language Association Citation Guide (Ohio State University Libraries)

How do I document sources from the Web in my works-cited list? (Modern Language Association)

MLA Style (Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) - closely follows the official MLA style manual in print--fairly descriptive as well as providing examples. For WWW sources it links to a FAQ page on MLA's official site.

MLA Style Guide: Print and Online - from Kingwood Library, Lonestar College (TX)

MLA Formating and Style Guide - The Online Writing Lab at Purdue

MLA Style (Diana Hacker) - for typical examples of print, media and internet sources

Citing Sources, Guide to Library Research (Duke University Libraries) - you can select or search from the drop down box the type of material you want to cite and the result will show you examples of all four styles and a listing of the essential elements that comprise the citation, regardless of which style you use. An excellent site.

Plagiarism (University of North Carolina Chapel Hill) Writing Center Handout


Hollens (October, 2008)