Research Guides: English: General Literature Resources

General Resources

This page holds resources held in common across all of the following topic areas.

Each sub-page will house resources more specific to its own study.

Database Best Bets

MLA International Bibliography
Subjects covered include literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory and criticism, and the dramatic arts. One of the most popular, as it indexes most published works in literature.
JSTOR
An archive of important scholarly journals, eBooks and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Offers high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as originally published.
Project MUSE
Includes 400 scholarly journals in humanities, social sciences, and mathematics and over 50,000 ebooks primarily from university presses.
Art and Architecture Source
Literature is a frequent inspiration for many artistic works. Study those connections in more depth here.

Journals

This is just a sampling of the academic journals the library has access to regarding literature. If you want to narrow your search to a specific time period or genre, finding a journal that publishes in that area can help. For example, if you are writing a paper about women's representation in literature, it might be helpful to check out a journal like Women and Language.

Contemporary Literature
Focuses on contemporary literature, post-WWII until today. Other than the time period, the journal is fairly broad and covers articles on novels, short stories, poetry, graphic fiction, etc.
Journal of Modern Literature
Focuses on a broad range of literary topics from 1900 to present. Its international scope is of special interest.
Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History
Covers a broad range of literary topics "regardless of genre or period" The MLQ's main focus is literary history, so if you are looking at topics related to how literature operates, effects, and is affected by its time period, then look here.
The Modern Language Review
A fairly broad, well-respected journal that covers medieval to modern literary topics "in the languages of continental Europe, together with English (including the United States and the Commonwealth), Francophone Africa and Canada, and Latin America."
Women and Language
Features women's issues across essays, research articles, news items, inquiries, book reviews, bibliographies, and other information on topics related to women, gender, communication, and language.

Books

Search the entire library catalog here.

Materials on Literature topics are found under the "P" subclass on the 3rd floor of the library.

PN	Literature-General
PR	English Literature
PS	American Literature

Interesting research topics may come from searches such as:

Dystopian fiction OR dystopias in literature
Cowboys in popular culture OR literature
Creation of cowboy hero
Western stories history and criticism
Narrative, emotion, insight
Emotions in literature
Literature philosophy

Encyclopedias

Oxford English Dictionary

The following links will help you get started on your research. Here you can find general background information, definitions, and history on many literary terms and concepts. Searching in an encyclopedia can also help you find a topic for a paper or project.

Online Literature Encyclopedias

The Literary Encyclopedia
TLE takes world literature as its field and publishes biographies of major and minor writers; scholarly descriptions of all interesting texts written by these authors, including those often neglected; and a variety of descriptive and critical essays on literary, cultural and historical matters, which provide a finer understanding of the social contexts in which this writing was produced. The library has many of the titles in our collection.

Entries in The Literary Encyclopedia are divided into three databases, People, Works and Topics & Events.
Gale Literature
Gale Literature – cross-search platform to simultaneously search through Dictionary of Literary Biography, Literature Criticism (Contemporary Literature Criticism and Twentieth Century Literary Criticism), Something About the Author, Contemporary Authors and other literary Gale eBook titles.

Gale Literature Criticism
Gale Literature Criticism – a reference tool that offers over 1,000 discovery portals for browsing Gale literature titles, beyond what is owned by the library. Includes articles, suggested reading lists, bibliographies and other avenues for research. Organized by popular topics, popular works, and popular authors.

Best Bets Online Encyclopedias

Bloom's Literary Criticism eBooks
The Bloom’s Literary Criticism eBook Collection represents a comprehensive library covering a broad selection of literary works, their authors and genres. Each title in the collection was edited by Harold Bloom, a leading American literary critic and Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University.

Chambers Dictionary of Literary Characters
A very helpful (and fun!) guide on well-known literary characters spanning from the classics to present-day literature. Includes interesting subcategories like "Literary Sidekicks" and "The Ghost in Fiction."

Print Encyclopedias in the Library

Classical Literature and Its Times
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks PA3003 .M67 2006
World Literature and Its Times helps students and researchers make connections between political/social climate during which books were written and the works themselves.
Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature
Call Number: Ref. PN41 .E48 1998
This encyclopedia examines the profound influence of folklore on literature. The more than 350 alphabetically arranged entries fall into four categories: writers and literary works that use folklore as a resource or source; concepts that make it easier to look at folklore and literature together; themes and characters that originated in oral literature but are also found in written literature; and scholars who have studied and contributed to the field of folklore and literature. The work concentrates on European and Western themes, including classical Greek and Roman. The introduction discusses the interest and connections between folklore.
Great Scott!
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks PN1995 .S419 1994
Publication Date: 1994