Literary Criticism

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Literary Criticism

A Research Guide

What key words will help me find information about literary criticism?

Where can I find print resources about literary criticism?

What are some good internet sites about literary criticism?

SELECTED SOURCES AT PAMUNKEY REGIONAL LIBRARY

This guide shows you how to find information in the library about literary criticism, the description, interpretation, and analysis of a novel, poem, story, or other written work, or of a group of works as a whole. Most literary criticism is in the form of an essay in a book or journal, but detailed reviews from magazines and newspapers can sometimes be considered literary criticism, too. Much of the reliable and authoritative literary criticism available online requires users to subscribe to a service to get to the information. For access to the widest range of reputable sources, plan on using print and online materials available in the library as a part of your research. If you need assistance or have questions, please feel free to ask a Library staff member or e-mail ask@pamunkeylibrary.org.

1. What key words will help me find information about literary criticism?

To find books that can be checked out, choose the SUBJECT search in PamCat, our online catalog, and type (one at a time) these subjects:

You may also want to browse subjects. When in the PamCat, choose BROWSE and type in “Criticism”. This will allow you to browse narrower subjects related to literary criticism.

2. Where can I find print resources on literary criticism in the library?

Most of the books will be shelved according to their Dewey Decimal Classification number in the Non-fiction Stacks at:

803

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

809

History, description, and criticism

800s in general

Criticism arranged by geographic location/language of writing

(ex. criticism of French Literature is found in the 840s)

Keep in mind that Juvenile non-fiction is not separated from Adult non-fiction if you have a special age-related or reading level need.

When you are doing research, make sure that you search in the reference area, too. These books cannot be checked out like the general collection can, but there is a lot of valuable information available for you to photocopy or add to notes. Some reference books you might look at include the following:

R 803 ABR	A glossary of literary terms	Available at Ashland and Mechanicsville
R 803 CHA (2 vols.)	Characters in 20th-century literature	Available at Ashland and Mechanicsville
R 803 CUD	A dictionary of literary terms and literary theory	Available at Ashland
R 803 HOL	A handbook to literature	Available at Ashland
R 808 NOV (multiple volumes)	Novels for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 808 POE (multiple volumes)	Poetry for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 808 SHO (multiple volumes)	Short stories for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 809 CON (multiple volumes)	Contemporary literary criticism	Available at Ashland
R 809 MAG (multiple volumes)	Masterplots : 1801 plot stories & critical evaluations of the world's finest literature	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 809 MAG (multiple volumes)	Magill's survey of world literature	Available at
R 809 NET	Social protest literature: an encyclopedia of works, characters, authors, and themes	Available at Ashland and Goochland.
R 809 TWE	Twentieth-century literary movements dictionary	Available at Ashland
R 809 WOM	Women in literature : reading through the lens of gender	Available at
R 809.1003 NOT (multiple volumes)	Notable poets	Available at Ashland
R 809.2 PAT	The Oxford dictionary of plays	Available at Ashland and Mechanicsville
R 809.3 BEA (multiple volumes)	Beacham's encyclopedia of popular fiction	Available at
R 809.3 MAS (multiple volumes)	Masterplots II : American fiction series	Available at Ashland and Mechanicsville
R 809.3 MAS (multiple volumes)	Masterplots II. Short story series	Available at Ashland
R 809.3 OXF	The Oxford companion to crime and mystery writing	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 809.3876 ANA	Anatomy of wonder: a critical guide to science fiction	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 809.3876 CLA(2 vols.)	Classics of science fiction and fantasy literature	Available at
R 809.8 AME (multiple volumes)	American women writers : a critical reference guide from colonial times to the present	Available at Ashland
R 809.98282 MUR	Black authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults: a biographical dictionary.	Available at Ashland and Goochland
R 810.9 AFR	African American authors, 1745-1945 : bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook	Available at
R 810.9 CON	Contemporary poets, dramatists, essayists, and novelists of the South: a bio-bibliographical sourcebook	Available at
R 810.9 MAG (multiple volumes)	Magill's survey of American literature	Available at Goochland, Mechanicsville, and West Point
R 810.9 NIN	Nineteenth-century American women writers : a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook	Available at Ashland and Mechanicsville
R 822.3 GRE (multiple volumes)	The Greenwood companion to Shakespeare: a comprehensive guide for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, Goochland, Mechanicsville, and West Point.
R 822.3 SHA	Shakespeare's characters for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, and Mechanicsville
R 822.3 SHA (2 vols.)	The Riverside Shakespeare	Available at
R 822.3 SHA (3 vols)	Shakespeare's world and work: an encyclopedia for students	Available at Ashland, Atlee, Goochland, Mechanicsville, and West Point.

Your library may not have all these resources available, but there may be books, magazines, and newspapers that you can check out — when in doubt, just ask a Library staff member or e-mail ask@pamunkeylibrary.org.

3. What are some good internet sites about literary criticism?

Databases

Literature Criticism Online Backlist (Library) or (Work, Home, or School)

Literature Criticism Online features full-text articles from Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (v. 1-187), Contemporary Literary Criticism (v. 1-235), and access to Gale's Literary Index.

Salem Literature (Outside of the library? E-mail ask@pamunkeylibrary.org for log in instructions)
The Salem Literature database includes the full content of the "Critical Insights" series, featuring the best of both classic and current literary criticism of the world’s most-studied authors and titles.

Web Sites

There are also a variety of excellent resources on literary criticism on the Internet, including the following sites:

IPL2’s Literary Criticism Database - http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/
Contains critical and biographical websites about authors and their works that can be browsed by author, by title, or by nationality and literary period. The collection is not inclusive of all the work on the web, but sites are selected for their overall usefulness.
A Lexicon of Literary Criticism - http://web.mac.com/radney/humanities/litcrit/litcrit.htm
Find out more about commonly used terms in the field of literary criticism.
eNotes Criticism Collection - http://www.enotes.com/lit/criticism
The criticism collection includes more than 40,000 full-length or excerpted essays, spanning more than 25 years of literary criticism.
Novelguide.com - http://www.novelguide.com/Free source for literary analysis on the web providing study guides as an educational supplement. Whether you call them book summaries, literature guides or novel guides, this material will guide you to a better understanding of classic and contemporary works. Literature Profiles, Metaphor Analysis, Theme Analysis, and Author Biographies are all here. In addition to free book notes, we have general biographies, sample study questions, sample essays, and more. (site contains ads)
SparkNotes - http://www.sparknotes.com/
SparkNotes is a resource to help you understand books, write papers, and study for tests. Check out their guides, No Fear Shakespeare, Test Prep, SparkCollege, Flash Cards, and more.\
The Libyrinth - http://www.themodernword.com/authors.html
This site spotlights select 20th-century authors who have not been widely analyzed online.
Voices from the Gaps - http://voices.cla.umn.edu/
Celebrating and documenting the creativity of Asian, Black, Latina, and Native women, Voices from the Gaps is one of the most comprehensive and well-respected academic databases for women artists of color.
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism - http://litguide.press.jhu.edu/
This is an indispensable resource for scholars and students of literary theory and discourse.
New York Review of Books - http://www.nybooks.com/
This extensive site covers not only new releases and children’s books, but the classics as well. They also offer a podcast for literature fanatics on the go.
PAL: Perspectives in American Literature - http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/TABLE.HTML
Examines various periods in American Literature (including novels and drama), providing hours of browsing in this extensive resource on the subject.
The Book: An Online Review at The New Republic - http://www.tnr.com/book
The New Republic offers up an excellent multimedia site packed with videos and podcasts in addition to essays and book reviews on a wide number of genres.
The Book Bench - http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/
Operated by The New Yorker, The Book Bench not only reviews literature, but looks at their overall cultural impact and current movements.
The Literary Saloon - http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/
Intelligent, insightful, and amazingly thorough, the Literary Saloon posts about the latest news, views, and histories of books from all over the world.
Tales from the Reading Room - http://litlove.wordpress.com/
With archives spanning all the way back to 2006, anyone with a few hours to spare will love the generous attention Tales from the Reading Room lavishes upon literary criticism.
A Piece of Monologue - http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/
Good and bad alike, literature does not exist in a vacuum, and A Piece of Monologue analyzes the cultures that influence and – in turn – find themselves influenced by the literary arts.
LiteraryHistory.com - http://www.literaryhistory.com/
This site catalogs credible literary criticism on nineteenth and twentieth century English and American literature that is freely available online.
Early Modern Literary Studies - http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/emlshome.html
A refereed journal serving as a formal arena for scholarly discussion and as an academic resource for researchers in the area. Articles in EMLS examine English literature, literary culture, and language during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; responses to published papers are also published as part of a Readers' Forum. Reviews evaluate recent work as well as academic tools of interest to scholars in the field.
Representative Poetry Online - http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/
This resource, from the University of Toronto, has several indexes of poets and poems, as well as collected writings on poetry, timelines, a poetic glossary, bibliographies and more.
Teaching Literature - http://www.teachingliterature.org/teachingliterature/criticism.htm
This list of links is categorized into general and school-specific topics, as well as individual webquests for teachers and students.
Google Scholar - http://scholar.google.com/
This is a Google tool used to locate scholarly articles online. Some of it is criticism material to which we have full-text access for free, either on the web or through our databases, but most of it is available only as citations or brief abstracts.
Transcendentalism Literary Criticism - http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/criticism/litcrit.html
This online resource was first created in Spring 1999 by Virginia Commonwealth University graduate students studying in Professor Ann Woodlief's class in Studies in American Transcendentalism. It is a work in progress, and submissions of papers, texts and notes on them, and links are welcomed.