Research Guide for ENGL 102: Looking at Literary Criticism
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Prepared by Elinor Appel After this workshop you should be able to:
Types of criticism you are researching:
Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory [P 81. B367 2002] is available in the library. This book includes an overview of several major types of criticism and gives an example of each. |
Background Information
Critical approaches to literary analysis
- For books: search the library catalog: keywords literary criticism (or add myth, marxist, etc.)
- LitGloss - brief definitions from Bedford/St Martin's publisher; use the alphabetized index at the top to find your term.
- "Literary Criticism," Wikipedia - a place to start. Ex. Reader-Response theory. Marxist literary criticism (VisualWikipedia). Reading Wikipedia is not conducting college-level research. While it's an acceptable place to begin your research, don't stop there!
Finding Critical Essays
You may have already searched the Internet and found references to some fabulous articles -- but where's the full text? It's in the periodical databases. Periodical databases contain full-text articles from are part of the "invisible web": they are pages you cannot access directly. Your best database for this assignment:
Literature Resource Center (Reference databases). Search this database of critical articles by keyword. Tips:
- Include terms that will retrieve the types of criticism you are searching:
- Search by an author or title that you know lends itself to particular kinds of criticism:
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Use the advanced search to set up your searches more easily.
Other databases (Periodical databases). Theses contain a range of articles, not just literary criticism:
- ProQuest Direct - a general periodical database with a range of articles (news to scholarly)
- Academic Search Premier - another general database with a range of articles (news to scholarly)
- EthnicNewswatch - a Proquest collection of ethnic, minority, and native press (includes scholarly articles)
- JSTOR - excellent, scholarly articles including in-depth literary criticism (articles are PDFs)
Refer to Finding Articles for tips on how to search a periodical database using keywords and topics. Though you do need to "talk to the database" using Boolean logic or other search symbols, start simple by combining two terms with an AND search.
- and – for combining concepts/keywords, will narrow the search: character and "mama day"
- or – when you are using related terms, will broaden the search: myth or archetype
- “ ” – when you are using a phrase: “mama day” (but only if you are searching in a basic search mode, otherwise this isn't necessary)
- * – when the terms have related stems: myth* for myth, myths, mythology, mythological
To access these databases from off-campus, you will be asked to enter your last name and student ID number.
- How do I Document Sources from the Web on my Works Cited List? (MLA.org)
- MLA handout (PDF)