This guide will help you locate criticism for Literature, Film, and Drama.
See the English Libguide for more assistance with Literary Criticism.
See the English Databases List for more resources.
Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme, style, setting or historical or political context. It usually includes discussion of the work’s content and integrates your ideas with other insights gained from research. Literary criticism may have a positive or a negative bias and may be a study of an individual piece of literature or an author’s body of work.
Although criticism may include some of the following elements in order to support an idea, literary criticism is NOT a plot summary, a biography of the author, or simply finding fault with the literature.
Researching, reading, and writing works of literary criticism will help you to make better sense of the work, form judgments about literature, study ideas from different points of view, and determine on an individual level whether a literary work is worth reading.
Examples of some types of literary criticism are:
Literary criticism in essays shortened from their original published versions can be found in the first two databases. Full text databases follow.
Search a master index to the major literature books published by Gale, including Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, and Poetry Criticism. Coverage: historical to present. Citations only.
Explore an authoritative source of literary criticism, summarizing authors' lives and works and including excerpts from scholarly articles. Includes literature criticism for these genres and time periods: classical and medieval; contemporary; drama; 1400-1800; 19th century; poetry; Shakespearean; short stories; 20th century. IMPORTANT NOTE: Because this source is an encyclopedic work, it should NEVER be directly cited. Always look up the original source of the excerpted and reprinted articles. Coverage: varies. Mostly full text.
Search for scholarly, international journals, books, and more, covering language, literature, composition, folklore, and film. Coverage: late 19th century to present. Some full text.
Access historical issues of Times Literary Supplement, a literary journal which scrutinized, dissected, applauded, and occasionally disparaged, the work of the twentieth century's leading writers and thinkers. This journal is cross-searchable with other collections via Gale Primary Sources. Coverage: 1902-2019. Mostly full text.
Access reviews of literature, both fiction and nonfiction, published in English, from writers in the United States and around the world. *This collection must be accessed from on campus.* Coverage: 1977-2021. Full text.
If you already have a newspaper citation, and need to locate the article, use the following steps:
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