Locating Literary Criticism in Journal Articles
This Web page discusses how to find literary criticism in journal articles.
To find criticism of a work in journal articles, follow the steps outlined in How to Find Articles in Journals. In this case, for step 1, select an index, MLA Bibliography, Humanities International Index (and Humanities Index), and Project MUSE are recommended (also JSTOR). These indexes can be found on the Research Databases page.
- MLA Bibliography. 1926- ; earlier years (1860's) have been spotted.
Includes citations to book chapters, books, and other types of materials. Includes more than 4,400 journals and series, and 1,000 book publishers. Includes nearly 60 JSTOR titles (with all but the most recent three to five years available full-text via the FindIt (SFX) button). Information on search limits is found on Using MLA Bibliography to Find Sources on Shakespeare. Simply replace the name of the author being researched or titles of his/her works in place of Shakespeare's in the examples. See also Searching MLA Bibliography by Subject for other search strategies specific to this database. See literary criticism terms to search in Selected MLA terms below.
- Humanities International Index .
Covers over 2100 journals. Uses the same software for searching as the MLA Bibliography.
- Humanities Index. 1974-1998 Print index. AI 3 .I495 REFERENCE SOUTH
Citations to journal articles.
- Project MUSE. Various starting dates.
All articles are full-text within the database. Over 65 "literature" journals, but other subject are included. See searching suggestions below.
NOTE: Search terms will not match between the indexes in all cases. For example, the subject/descriptor term used for "18th century English literature":
MLA Bibliography Humanities International Index Project MUSE
in context:
English literature -- 18th century.
- JSTOR
Full text journal articles. There is no subject indexing, so search is pretty much keyword only. This means that searching for for articles from the past may require a great deal of creativity and knowledge of how things were described in different eras. There is an options to search for links outside of JSTOR (Project MUSE).
See Excerpted Articles below for another way to identify literary criticism resources.
Selected MLA Terms
Some terms used in MLA Bibliography related to literary criticism:- literary-theory-and-criticism
More specific (narrower) terms. Use index or thesaurus to see subdivisions for (+) terms:
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More general (broader) term:
- theory
Related terms:
- critical judgment
- metacriticism
- reviews
- television criticism
- theater criticism
Searching Project MUSE
In Project MUSE records can be searched by:
All Fields (w/text)
All Fields except text
Article Text
Article Author
Article TitleLC Subject
Journal
____
Author Reviewed
Title Reviewed
The search may be narrowed down by type ( All Documents, Article, Review, Poetry, Fiction,or Drama), by date, and/or by journal (All available by subject, or only those locally available; one can select individual noncontiguous journals by holding down the Ctrl key when selecting additional titles). Sort options are: Relevance; Date, Latest First; Date, Earliest First; Journal A-Z; Journal Z-A. Display options are 10, 20, 50, 75, or 100 records per page. Up to four of the above categories can be searched at one time in the Advanced Search. Search one category and have sort options in the Basic Search.
Specific Work (novel, play, short story, poem)
If the specific work has entire articles written about it, the Title Reviewed search is the fastest way to identify items. For example:
The first result will look for this (as of August 2005):
View the entire article by clicking on View in PDF (an appropriate viewer needs to be available) or the highlighted title for HTML version of the article. Page breaks are noted in the HTML text. Click on Show Occurrences in Context to see where the title appears in the document. This is not very useful in this case--the entire article is about the book! In addition, the "in context" is not very helpful because no page is indicated, nor can one click on the instance to find where it appears within the article. Do an Edit --> Find (on this page) in HTML or use the (binocular image) search in PDF in order to identify specific words or phrases within a document. The Show Occurrences in Context will identify the frequency of the searched term(s) in the article.
Author
To identify articles that discuss a particular author's works, do an LC Subject search:
The first title of five (as of August 2005) is:
Any Reference
If any reference to an author or work would be helpful, do the default All Fields (w/text) search, relevancy scores are listed:
The third record of over 2075 records (as of August 2005) is:
However, most of these search results only address Wright's works in passing--the LC subject search will give much more relevant results (26 titles as of August 2005--the one above is listed fifth). The lower the search score, the less likely that there will be much about the author or his or her works. The Author Reviewed search works well for Richard Wright, but success with this search method is spotty--sometimes very few or no records appear, when they will appear under LC Subject.
The All Fields except text search is a way to have better relevance while casting a wider net than a strictly LC subject search:
The 32 items that appear are primarily about Richard Wright (one of the items is a visual image created by another Richard Wright, an active photographer).
"Criticism and Interpretation" is the phrase found frequently after an author's name (sometimes includes dates). Also seen is "History and Criticism" for broader interpretations (for example, "Science fiction -- History and criticism").
The Contemporary Literary Criticism series of titles has excerpts from journal articles (and book chapters) for selected authors. They are an excellent resource that can be used to identify trends in attitudes towards particular novels or short stories. Citation information for the complete critical source is provided, so these resources serve as a literary index.
Contemporary Literary Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Today's Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, Scriptwriters, and Other Creative Writers (CLC). Detroit: Gale, 1973- . Also available online 1992- (to CSU users).
PN 771 .C617 REF Includes people who are still alive or who died after 1960.
Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations. Detroit: Gale, 1984- . PN 86 .L56 REF
Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1800 and 1899, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations. Detroit: Gale, 1981- . PN 761 .N5x REF
Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of Novelists, Poets, Playwrights, Short Story Writers, Philosophers, and Other Creative Writers Who Died between 1900 and 1960, from the First Published Critical Appraisals to Current Evaluations. Detroit: Gale, 1978- . PN 94 .T8x REF
See also