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Liaison

Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. This guide provides advice on how to find published criticism of various types of literature.  The resources listed offer a way to gain background information and find out how others have reacted to a piece of writing.  But remember, to experience the thrill of being changed by something you have read and to enjoy the satisfaction of sharing what you have learned, there is no substitute for careful reading and deep thinking on your part.

This Subject Guide contains links to a few key indexes for Literary Criticism plus significant online resources and print materials housed in the Library's first floor reference section. Web Resources below contains links to sites with substantial academic content. These may assist you on research papers and other class assignments as well as lead to additional useful sites. Look at the Library's Databases for many other valuable scholarly databases in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. For more web resources, try a Google Scholar search with appropriate keywords for your specific needs.

Liaison in charge: Carol McAllister

Research: Getting Started @ Swem

For an overview of the basics of literary criticism, visit Critical Reading: A Guide

John Lye, a professor in the Departments of English and Communication Studies at Brock University (Canada), prepared Critical Reading: A Guide for beginning literature students to help them think critically about what they are reading. It contains sections on analyzing poetry, fiction, prose in fiction, and on writing analytical essays.

Using the Online Catalog to Find Books

For books about an author or his or her works, do a subject search using the author's name. Enter the last name first (Woolf, Virginia or Steinbeck, John), select Begins with, and then click on Subject. (A Begins with / Author search produces a listing of books that the author has written.)

Any number of keyword searches are possible. Use the word and to connect two or more terms. Enter the terms, select Keyword and click on Everything. This search will produce a listing of all the records that contain the words you have entered. For example: Hemingway and women. This kind of search will include some books that contain only an essay or chapter about a writer.

For videos, enter a subject term and the word videorecording (one word). For example: Frankenstein and videorecording. With any keyword searching, be prepared for some citations that are not relevant to your topic.

When you find a title in the catalog that looks promising, select the “Details” link and scroll to the bottom of the “Item Information” screen. Notice the subject headings assigned to the book. Use these headings to find additional materials related to your topic. In the catalog, these headings are active links. When you click on them, you will see a display of all the titles in the system that have that subject heading.

Look for individual bibliographies for major writers. These compilations list both books and articles about the writer and his works and can be found by doing a Keyword / Everything search using the writer’s last name and the word bibliography.

The Library of Congress Classification range for language and literature falls under the letter P. The PR’s are British Literature and the PS’s are American Literature. Major writers are assigned their own call numbers. (Edgar Allan Poe’s is PS 2631.) Literary materials are arranged on the shelf with the writer’s primary works first, followed by selections of commentary and criticism. Using the catalog, find the call number that has been assigned to your author and then browse in that call number range in the reference area on the first floor and in the third floor book stacks.

When you find appropriate volumes in the library stacks, search in the table of contents or the index for references to pages that discuss the piece of writing you are considering.

Most scholarly books include lists of sources used to compile the book--bibliographies, footnotes, and indexes. Use these features to discover additional citations.

Database/Article Indexes - Finding Journal Articles

Journal articles about literary topics can be found by doing searches in subject indexes. The most obvious subject terms are an author's name and/or the title of a literary work. You can combine these terms with other concepts, if you are using an electronic index. For example, Tolkien and Medieval.

To connect to these databases from the Swem homepage, select the link Databases and then use the alphabetical listing at the top of the page. Useful electronic subject indexes for Literary Studies are:

Getting Copies of Journal Articles

After using an electronic index/database and developing a list of citations, find out if the library owns a specific journal by doing a periodical title search in the on-line catalog. Enter the title of the periodical, not the title of the article, select Begins with, and then click on Periodical Title. ( Do not include the articles--the, a, or an at the beginning of the title.) Select the “Item Information” tab for details about what copies the library has and where you can find them.

If the journal is available online, a link will appear in the catalog record. You can also view a list of available electronic full-text journals by clicking the Electronic Journals link in the green band at the top of the library homepage.

Many databases include direct links to full-text text articles and/or to the periodical record in the library catalog. Use these links for quick access to the articles you need.

Print copies of current issues of journals (the last six months to a year) are kept in alphabetical order on shelves on the second floor. Back issues are bound, assigned call numbers, and shelved with the books in the second and third floor stacks. Call numbers are posted on the current periodical shelves and can be found by doing a title search in the online catalog.

If Swem doesn’t subscribe to the journal that you need, submit an Interlibrary Loan Request. Electronic request forms are available on the library homepage under the Interlibrary Loan link.

Print Reference Resources

All of these books are found in the reference section on the first floor.

American and British Poetry: A Guide to the Criticism - Ref PS 303 A43 1984
American Writers - Ref PS 129 A55
Book Review Digest and Book Review Index - Ref Z 1219 C96 and Ref Z 1035 A1 B6
British Writers - Ref PR 85 B688
Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC) - Ref PN 771 C59 - continuing series
Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series - Ref PR 502 C85 1992
Critical Survey of Short Fiction - Ref PN 3321 C7 2001
Dictionary of Literary Biography (DLB) - Ref PS 129 D52 - continuing series
Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory - Ref PN 81 E43 1999
Guide to American Poetry Explication - Ref PS 201 A1 G84 1989
Interviews and Conversations with 20th Century Authors Writing in English - Ref PR 471 V73 1982
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism - Ref PN 81 A1 J6 1994
Literary Criticism Index - Ref PN 523 W44 1994
Literature and Its Times - Ref PN 50 L574 1997
Magill’s Bibliography of Literary Criticism - Ref PN 523 Al M3 1997
New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature - Ref PR 83 A1 C3 1999
New Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism - Ref PR85. N39 1985
Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism (NCLC) - Ref PN 761 N5 – continuing series
Oxford Companion to English Literature - Ref PR 19 D73 2000
Poetry Criticism (PC) - Ref PN 1010 P6 – continuing series
Poetry Explication: A Checklist of Interpretation - Ref PR 502 A1 K8 1980
Short Story Criticism (SSC) - Ref PN 3373 S386 – continuing series
Reference Guide to English Literature - Ref PR 106 S7 1991
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (TCLC) - Ref PN 771 T94 – continuing series
Twentieth-Century American Literature - Ref PS 221 T834 1985
Twentieth-Century Short Story Explication - Ref PN 3373 A1 W35 1993– continuing series
The Year's Work in English Studies - Ref PE 58 E6 (Vol. & Year varies)

Handbooks and Guides

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Ed. - Ref LB 2369 G53 2003 ( Ref. Desk & Reserves)
Research Guide for Undergraduate Students: English and American Lit. Ref PR 56 B34 1996
Literary Research Guide: An Annotated Listing of Reference Sources - Ref PR 83 H34 2002
Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ref PN 44.5 M86 2003
Handbook to Literature - Ref PN 41 H355 2003

Web Resources

Literary Resources on the Net by Jack Lynch of Rutgers University
This collection of links connects to sites dealing especially with English and American literature and features information useful to academics.

Voice of the Shuttle maintained by Alan Liu, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
This award-winning site “emphasizes both primary and secondary resources and defines its audience as people who have something to learn from a higher-education, professional approach to the humanities.” It covers time periods, cultural backgrounds, literary theories, etc.

Literary Criticism from Internet Public Library
“This site contains over 1,000 critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period.”