LibGuides: English : Literature

Works, vol. 2, Elizabeth Gaskell Image: Rachel Arteaga

Browse by Call Number

PN Literature (General)

PR English Literature

PS American Literature

For a more complete list please see the Library of Congress Classification Outline.

The library has numerous literature journals. A browseable list can be viewed in the catalog.

Where to Find Literary Criticism

The Oxford English Dictionary defines literary criticism as "the art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of a literary work; consideration or analysis of a text in relation to language, structure, biography, history, etc., or (in later use, freq. with modifying word) by a particular philosophical, political, or linguistic method; (also) an instance of this, esp. in a written form; a school or method of criticizing literature."

You can find literary criticism in both books and scholarly journals. To search the library catalog do a key word search for author, title, and or themes/subjects of what you want to write about. Look at individual records and try to refine your search by locating subject terms with the word "criticism" or other subjects that might help you further your research.

A good place to search for scholarly articles is Literature Online (LiOn) as it is devoted to literature and criticism. It contains records for the MLA International Bibliography (MLAIB) and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (ABELL). LiOn also links to articles from Project MUSE and JSTOR.

To search LiOn go to the Criticism link on the database's home page. Then select the "All Criticism." Start your search with key words and possibly a subject like a title. Try various searches until you get results you can use. You may also want to limit the publication date, source type, and whether or not you only want to view records with full text. If you do not limit to full text you may need to use Interlibrary Services (directions on the right). If you need more help with searching try the Help link in the upper right corner or contact a librarian.

Reference Resources

Consulting a reference resource is a great way to inform yourself about a text. You can consult the following resources to gain a better understanding of an author, text, movement, etc.

Gale Literary Sources This link opens in a new window
A combination of several databases into one comprehensive literature database. Contemporary Authors provides biographical and bibliographical information on more than 120,000 authors. The “largest, most extensive compilation of literary commentary available,” Literature Criticism Online, includes the resources Contemporary Literature Criticism, Drama Criticism, Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Gale Literary Sources also includes Gale Virtual Reference Library, a multidisciplinary collection of encyclopedias.
Literature Online Fulltext (LiOn) This link opens in a new window
Over 350,000 fully-searchable works of poetry, prose and drama. Also included are author biographies, guides to more than 200 classic and contemporary literary works from Aeschylus to Toni Morrison, and poets on screen -- a multimedia collection of major poets reading and interpreting their own works.
Oxford English Dictionary (OED) This link opens in a new window
A historical dictionary of English, covering the language from the earliest times to the present. Contains the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words from across the English-speaking world.

Encyclopedias & More
Search either Gale Virtual Reference or Oxford Reference Online. Both resources have reference works devoted to 20th-century and contemporary British literature.