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Finding Literary Criticism
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There are many ways to locate literary criticism. Choose one or all of the options listed below depending upon how much information you need to find.
Starting Points
When to use them.
Burke Library has two major resources that collect and republish literary criticism that has appeared in books, journals, and magazines. Start with these if you want to get a quick idea of the range of material available on the work you're researching.
How to find them.
Below are details on two of the library’s most extensive series with excerpts from critical reviews. In many cases, these resources reproduce only part of a longer article. Use Citation Linker to see if the full text is available from our library.
Literature Resource Center
Full text collection of biographies, bibliographies, critical essays, work overviews, author-related websites, and an events timeline. Perform an author or title search and then choose the "literary criticism" tab on the results page to get full text articles. The Literature Resource Center contains only selected content from the print volumes. For an index to the complete content of the print series listed below, use the Gale Literary Index.
- Contemporary Literary Criticism
Ref PN771 .C59
Covers authors who are living or who died after 1959. (Complete content from volume 95 on is available online; selected content from volumes 1-94 online.)
- Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
Ref PN771 .G27
Covers authors who died between 1900 and 1959. (Selected content online.)
- Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism
Ref PN761 .N56
Covers authors who lived between 1800 and 1900. (Selected content online.)
- Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800
Ref PN86 .L53
Covers authors who lived between 1400 and 1800. (Selected content online.)
- Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism
Ref PN610 .C55
Covers authors of antiquity through the fourteenth century. (Selected content online.)
Library of Literary Criticism series
Connect to the ALEX and perform a title search using the phrase “library of literary criticism” to find the location of the following titles:
- Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors (1902)
- Major Modern Dramatists
- Modern American Literature
- Modern Arabic Literature
- Modern Black Writers
- Modern Commonwealth Literature
- Modern French Literature
- Modern German Literature
- Modern Latin American Literature
- Modern Romance Literatures
- Modern Slavic Literatures
- Modern Women Writers
How to cite them.
Both the Gale Group series and the Library of Literary Criticism series include publication information for the criticism they excerpt. If you decide to cite an excerpt directly from the Gale or Library of Literary Criticism series books, consult the examples below for MLA-style citations:
- Stewart, Jack F. “Color in To the Lighthouse.” Twentieth Century Literature 31 (1985): 438-58. Excerpted in Literature Resource Center. Infotrac. Hamilton College Library, Clinton. 29 February 2004 <http://galenet.galegroup.com/>. [The date immediately preceding the URL would be the date you last accessed the document.]
- Fiedler, Leslie A. “Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey!” Partisan Review June 1948: 664-71. Excerpted in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Sharon K. Hall. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale, 1982. 467-68.
- Bellow, Saul. Commentary June 1952: 608-09. Excerpted in Modern Black Writers. A Library of Literary Criticism. Ed. Michael Popkin. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1978. 189-90. [In cases like this where the citation is incomplete, provide as much information as you can.]
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Books and Book Chapters
When to use them.
Books can provide detailed criticism and analysis of an author's works. Even if you don't have time to read an entire book, you can often find a single chapter that's relevant to your topic. Or, use the book's index to locate those pages that talk about the points you're most interested in.
How to find them.
Use Alex and WorldCat to find books about a single author or literary work.
- Search ALEX by subject to find books that are devoted to criticism of an author or literary work. Enter the last name first (e.g., morrison toni). Look for the subheading "criticism and interpretation" to find books that analyze an author's works. Look for a subheading that includes a title to find books about an individual work (e.g., morrison toni beloved).
- Search WorldCat by keyword using the literary work’s title (e.g., "one hundred years of solitude") to find book chapters or essays in anthologies. For works not originally published in English, use the untranslated title as well (e.g., "cien años de soledad"). In some cases, using a shortened version of a literary work's title may result in a few additional sources (e.g., "huck finn").
NOTE: You can limit your search to books in our library by checking the box in front of “Items in my library” near the bottom of the search screen. When you find a title you want, choose the “See more details for locating this item” link, and then follow the “Find It” link in the full record to get a call number.
- Search ALEX by subject to find bibliographies of criticism written about much-studied authors and their works. Look for the subheading "bibliography" (e.g., faulkner william bibliography). Bibliographies often provide the most complete list of critical writing about a particular author. They also usually include annotations describing the content of these critical works.
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Articles from Scholarly Journals
When to use them.
Articles are more narrowly focused than books. Use articles from scholarly journals when doing in-depth research or when you're interested in a specific aspect of an author's work. For example, it would be easier to find an article about the theme of marriage in Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country than one that provides an overview of her works.
How to find them.
To locate scholarly literary criticism, first use one of the databases below to locate references to articles. Then follow the “Find It” link to see if our library has the journal in which the article is published. Scholarly articles can also be located by using bibliographies as explained above. Scholarly articles can also be located by using bibliographies as explained above.
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Book Reviews
When to use them.
Their is no clear distinction between literary criticism and book reviews. Influential critics like William Dean Howells, T. S. Eliot, and Edmund Wilson (to name a few) wrote critical reviews for publications like Harper's New Monthly Magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New Republic—none of which would be considered a scholarly journal.
Use book reviews when you want to document the critical reception of a book at its time of publication or when you can establish the scholarly credentials of the reviewer.
How to find them.
The most important thing to know when you are looking for a book review is the date that the book was published since reviews usually appear within a year or two of publication. If you do not know the date of publication and do not have a copy of the book, check the library catalog. If the book is not in the library catalog, consult a reference librarian.
When you know the year of publication, you can choose an appropriate index or database from the list below. If you choose an electronic index, be sure that the index includes materials from the year your book was published. If you choose the paper version of an index, begin by looking in the index that covers the year the book was published, and then try the next one or two volumes of the index.
Many book reviews are either indexed, excerpted, or appear in full in the resources listed above. You may find additional reviews in the sources listed here:
- Academic Search Premier
Coverage: varies, but many titles go back to the 1970s.
To locate book reviews, choose "Book Review" from the drop-down menu next to "Document Type."
- Book Review Digest
Ref Z1219 .C96
Coverage: 1906-1996
Indexes and excerpts book reviews from about 75 magazines and newspapers.
- Book Review Index
Ref Z1035 .A1 B62
Coverage: 1965-1997
Indexes book reviews from about 450 publications.
- LexisNexis Academic
Coverage: varies.
Selection of newspapers and magazines with reviews of books, movies, plays, etc.
Choose "Arts & Sports News" from the drop-down menu of the top box. Then choose "Book, movie, music, & play reviewsz' from the drop-down menu of the box below. To find additional reviews search the "General News/Major Papers" portion of LexisNexis.
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Additional Sources
When to use them.
The library has a significant number of books that discuss national literatures, literary movements, or recurring literary themes. Many of these devote chapters or large sections to individual authors or particular literary works. In most cases, you will be consulting these sources after finding a citation to them in another book or essay.
How to find them.
The best way to find out if one of these books includes a discussion of a particular author is to consult a bibliography of criticism written about your subject. If one is not available, the following strategies can be used in searching the library's catalog.
- Find books about a particular national literature by performing a subject search in ALEX that combines the name of a nationality or region with subheadings as shown in the examples below. Each of these searches will result in a list of different titles. (You may disregard punctuation and capitalization when entering the phrase in the search box.)
American literature
American literature -- History and criticism
Latin American fiction
Latin American fiction -- History and criticism
- Find books that focus on works written during a particular period by performing a subject search in ALEX that combines the name of a nationality or region with the word "literature" and a date. Look for books under both the main heading (i.e., French literature -- 16th century) and applicable subdivisions (i.e., French literature -- 16th century -- History and criticism).
Books focusing on literary works written after 1800 are subdivided by century (e.g., Russian literature -- 20th century). Period subdivisions for American, English, French, German and Spanish literature before 1800 are as follows:
American literature -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
American literature -- Revolutionary period, 1775-1783
American literature -- 1783-1850
English literature -- Middle English, 1100-1500
English literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700
French literature -- To 1500
French literature -- 16th century
French literature -- 17th century
German literature -- Old High German, 750-1050
German literature -- Middle High German, 1050-1500
German literature -- Early modern, 1500-1700
Spanish literature -- To 1500
Spanish literature -- Classical period, 1500-1700
Other helpful period subdivisions include:
Classical literature
Literature, Medieval
European literature -- Renaissance, 1450-1600
- Find books about a particular literary movement or theme by performing a subject search in ALEX that combines a word related to your topic with the phrase "in literature" (e.g, marriage in literature or naturalism in literature). Library of Congress Subject Headings are not always consistent, so you may want to try some keyword searches that combine a word related to your topic with the phrase "and literature."
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(Reviewed: August 30, 2006)
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