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Introductory Literary Criticism Research Guide

The Guide to Library Research provides an introduction to the research process, including an overview of "Scholarly" and "Popular" Publications

Books

McCain Library has a wide range of books about literature and literary critisim. To find them, search SOPHIA. To start, try a keyword search on the author's last name and the term criticism. You may also want to search on the author and the theme you are researching.

Reference Books (section under construction)

There are several sets of literary criticism in the Reference Section of the library and specialized encyclopedia sets on literature topics. Most of these are in the PN - PS call number range.

Selected Databases for Journal Articles

General Databases, covering scholarly & popular publications. Many articles available full-text online.

Academic Search Complete

Research Library (at ProQuest)

Specialized Databases

MLA International Bibliography

MLA will be your primary resource for finding scholarly literary criticism. MLA is an index to books and articles on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics.

From MLA Help:

MLA International Bibliographyis an index of journal articles, books and dissertations. Produced by the Modern Language Association, the electronic version of the bibliography dates back to 1963 and contains over 1.6 million citations from more than 4,400 journals and series and 1,000 book publishers. Coverage is international and subjects include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism, dramatic arts, as well as the historical aspects of printing and publishing. Listings on rhetoric and composition and the history, theory and practice of teaching language and literature are also included. In addition, the MLA Directory of Periodicals and the association's proprietary thesaurus used to assign descriptors to each record in the bibliography are also included. Examples of titles offered in MLA International Bibliography include: Journal of International Folklore, Journal of English and German Philology, Journal of Linguistics, Journal of Popular Film and Television, Language and Communication, Language Teaching Research, Modern Language Journal, etc.

JSTOR

Literature Resource Center

Project Muse

To get the full text of the article

Many articles in these databases will be available full text online. If not, there will often be an icon or a link to search for full text (different databases set this up in different ways).

Clicking on the SFX button will help you see if the article is available full text through another database, and there will be a link into the online library catalog SOPHIA so you can see if we have the journal in print. The Journal/Article Locator link on the library home page is another way to get to this type of search.

For additional assistance, please contact the McCain Library Reference Desk in person, by phone (404-471-6096), or by submitting a question online