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English and American Literature Subject Guide — Criticism Databases

Resources for researching English and American literature

Resources for Literary Criticism

Not all authors, works, or literary movements have been extensively studied, so researches in some of the databases below may yield no results.

 

You can try different databases -- the Alternative Resources listed on this page, for example -- or resources such as Google Scholar to make sure that you have searched all possible places.

 

Tips:

  • For criticism of individual works, you may also want to research different works by the same author in case these have been analyzed.
  • When in doubt, contact me!

Keep in mind:

The MLA International Bibliography, the Gale Literary Criticism, and the World Shakespeare Bibliography Online normalize the spelling of authors' and subjects' names; e.g., Shakspear, Shakespear, Shackspeare, and Shakspere (etc.) are indexed as Shakespeare. The preferred form of the name is given in "name as subject" at the top of the page in the MLA International Bibliography and as "Person -- by or about" in the Gale Literary Criticism.

The Cambridge Collections Online, JSTOR, and Project MUSE  are excellent resources but also include much material that is not specifically "literary."  Adding a term such as literary or criticism to a search in those resources may retrieve more relevant results.

The scholarly resources listed below often contain information about authors, literary works, or literary movements that is not indexed in such resources as the MLA International Bibliography and the Gale Literary Resources.  These resources tend to have their own thesauruses and indexes.
  • Science Fiction and  Fantasy Research Database

    A freely available resource for the study of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.  Resources reference historical materials, books, articles, news reports, interviews, film reviews, commentary, and fan writing.  Note:  This is not a full-text database, though its citations may be fully available elsewhere.

  • SFE:  The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

    • The freely available online third edition of a work first published (in paper) in 1979.  Its entries permit research on the art, authors, awards, characters, comics, community, critics, editors, fans, films, games, house names, poetry, publications, publishers, radio shows, themes, translators, and television shows associated with science fiction, at an international level.  There are many illustrations, and entries are frequently updated.  

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