Answered By: Jessica Maris
Last Updated: Oct 25, 2023     Views: 105

The best place to find articles on works of literature is in our literary criticism databases. You can go to A-Z databases: Literary Criticism to access all our databases with criticism, but the ones below are your best bets. For more, go to Tips for Finding Literary Criticism.

JSTOR

  1. Start by searching with the title of your work. Quotes around a title of a work can really help. 
  2. You can use the Refine Results options to limit your results to the most relevant articles. 
    • Under Academic content, try Journals
    • Under Subject, try Language & Literature
    • Under Language try English 
  3. Once you find an article you like you can find Related text on the article page, where you may find even more articles that you can use. Try the Navigate the Article Page in How to Use JSTOR if you aren't sure where to find it. 

Literature & Language Database

  1. Type in your author's work to get the most relevant results.
  2. Once you have a result list, find Subject on the left side and select literary criticism.
  3. You can review subject options again and narrow more if needed.
  4. Under Limit to, you can limit to Peer reviewed

Gale Literature Criticism

  1. Type the title of a specific work or the author in the search boxIt will make auto suggestions as you type; choose the one that matches and hit enter.
  2. The result list is already narrowed down to literature criticism by default. This databases does have other kinds of content like work overviews but the criticism os what you want.
  3. On the right side of the screen you have options for narrowing down more by subject, author, peer reviewed and more. You can even search within the results. Usually the best options if to look under subjects or search within your result list.

Tips

  • Using quotes around the title of the author's work will help get you more relevant results. For example "Annabel Lee".
  • Don't forget to grab your MLA style citation from the databases for your paper! 

And don't forget books!

Books and eBooks can be a great source for literature criticism.

OneSearch for Print Books

  1. Go to Advanced Search in OneSearch
  2. Type in the author or the title of the poem/story/novel in the first filed, and use Any field menu to select subject
  3. Type in criticism in the 2nd field and hit search. 
  4. In the Refine my results options, select Held by library to narrow down print books. 

Gale eBooks

  • Click on the literature category on the from page, then search within literature to find your author or specific work.

Ebook Central

EBook Central has lots of eBooks with literary criticism, but on many other topics as well.

  1. Type in your author's work to get the most relevant results.
  2. Once you have a result list, find Subject on the left side and select literature
  3. We do have some Spanish language books, so you can also narrow down to just English under Language if you like.
  4. You can review subject options again and narrow more if needed.

Salem Online eBooks

Salem Online has a great collection of literary criticism by author, work or theme.

  • Browse under literature for your author/authors' work to see all criticism for that author/authors' work.

EBSCO eBooks

  • You can use the same techniques here you’d use in any EBSCO databases. Click on Subject and see what options most closely match topic and select.

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