Literary Criticism: This page is designed to help you in the sometimes confusing work of finding literary criticism to support an interpretation of a piece of literature.
LRC Databases: Our databases are the
best places to start.
These databases will be the most useful. But check the other databases
for sources with scholarly journals if you have time just in case.
Literature Resource
Center
Biographical sketches and literary criticism covering more than 120,000
writers.
Proquest Platinum
This database includes a number of scholarly journals, including literary
criticism. Make sure you choose the Scholarly Journals
option. Add the word criticism or phrase literary
criticism to your search.
First Search
Offers a number of databases with scholarly journal articles, including
literary criticism.. Not all of the results are full text. Most useful
for in depth or college level research.
Library Catalogs : Next try our book
collection.
If we don't have an item for a school project, we may be able
to interlibrary loan, or borrow, the item for you. But you will probably
have to take a short trip if we don't own the book.
LRC Online
Catalog
Search the book collections of our school's Learning Resource Center (LRC).
DuPage
Magic
Search the library catalogs of all college, school, public and other libraries
throughout DuPage county.
Linc Catalog
Search the library catalogs of public libraries in West Chicago, Batavia,
St. Charles, Bloomingdale and other cities in the area.
College of DuPage (COD) Library
An academic, or college, library will be one of your best resources if
you are willing to to take a short trip. COD also has a Research
Guide for literature topics which covers materials
in the COD library..
General Internet Resources: Last, try the Internet.
Alright, I will warn you now: literary criticism on the web is
not easy to find. Most of what you do find will be irrelevant, of poor
quality, or way too hard to understand. Two of these links will lead you
to information in books.
- Internet Public Library:
Literary Criticism
A large collection of online literary criticism on the web. Very hit and miss though. - Literary History
A large collection of links to literary criticism on over 200 American and British authors. - Oak Lawn Public Library: Indexes and Databases
There are several databases here created by the Oak Lawn Public Library staff that help you find citations for your author or particular work. Use the drop down list to select the literature databases. Look for the most appropriate database for your task (e.g. American Novel Criticism). Note: Some of the databases are only accessible if you are at their building. - Google Scholar
Search for books and journal articles about your topic through Google's database. You are likelly to find more abstracts and citations than full text articles, but you can check with the LRC staff for help in obtaining the source. - Gale Group Literary
Index
This website allows you to find which of Gale's products have information about your author or specific piece of literature. Hint: Most libraries (including ours) will have many of these books.
Specific Internet Resources: More specific time periods, movements or authors.
- Romanticism on the Net
An online journal that covers British Romantic writers. A Table of Contents and links to previous issues is on the right and bottom of the home page. - American Transcendentialism Web
Information about the American Transcendentialism movement and links to criticism and other information. - SSSL Bibliography
A database of citations and abstracts related to American Southern literature.
Last Updated: April 27, 2010