Literature Subject Guide

Subject Specific Databases

More subject specific databases are available from the Electronic Databases A-Z list page.

Literature Online                                                                                                                                   A fully searchable library of more than 350,000 works of English and American poetry, drama and prose, 243 full text literature journals, and other key critical and reference resources. A collection that in effect comprises a significant proportion of the corpus of English and American Literature.

MLA International Bibliography -- 1926 to date.                                                                                        This is an important database for research pertaining to literature, language, linguistics, and folklore. Coverage is international. The most important database for literary criticism (includes articles, books and chapters of books), but it is not the easiest to use. It has some "linked" full-text, but does not include full text items in the database itself.

Literature Resource Center                                                                                                               Full-text biographies, overviews, and literary criticism for 130,000 writers and their works

Literary Reference Center                                                                                                                     A full-text database that combines information from major respected reference works, books, and literary journals as well as original content from EBSCO Publishing. Literary Reference Center includes thousands of plot summaries, synopses, and work overviews; articles of literary criticism; author biographies; full text of over 430 literary journals; book reviews; classic and contemporary poems and short stories; full text of over 7,000 classic novels; author interviews; and images of key literary figures.

General Databases

Academic OneFile                                                                                                                                  Indexes magazines and journals from a broad range of subject areas such as current events, general sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Many articles can be viewed and printed. Book reviews are covered.

Academic Search Complete  -- 1984 to date.                                                                                         Provides many full text links to a mix of general interest publications and those in specific academic areas, such as social sciences, humanities, education, language and linguistics, arts and literature.

JSTOR Arts & Science Collections -- 1800 to date.                                                                            Covers a range of disciplines: African Studies, African American Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Art History, Asian Studies, Classics, Ecology, Economics, Education, Film Studies, Finance, History, Latin American Studies, Language and Literature, Mathematics, Middle Eastern Studies, Music, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Psychology, Religion, Slavic Studies, Sociology, Statistics

Indexes

Essay and General Literature Index 1900 to date                                                                           Location: Reference Index Collection                                                                                                     Coverage spans the entire range of the humanities and social sciences, including literary works, art history, drama, and film.

Humanities Index                                                                                                                           Location: Serials Index Collection 1974 to date                                                                                Indexes over 460 periodicals in the humanities, including classics

Selected Journal Titles

Antioch Review                                                                                                                    Comparative Literature                                                                                                                    Essays in Literature                                                                                                                    Explicator                                                                                                                                    Literary Review                                                                                                                            Review of English Studies                                                                                                             Studies in Black American Literature

Book Collections

To browse RJT Library’s literature collections in the reference book collection or the circulating book collection, try starting in the following Library of Congress Classification subject areas.

PN: Literature

PQ: Romance literatures

PR: English literature

PS: American literature

PT: Germanic literatures

Black Literature Criticism                                                                                                           Location: Reference Stacks PS153.N5 B556 2008

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English                                                                                       Location: Reference Stacks PR85.C29 1993

Contemporary Literary Criticism                                                                                                  Location: Reference Stacks PN771.C59

MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures            Location: Reference Stacks Z7006.M64                                                                                            Covers general linguistics, theoretical and descriptive linguistics, comparative and historical linguistics, and individual languages and language groups.

Poetry Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Works of the Most Significant and Widely Studied Poets of World Literature                                                                                                                         Location: Reference Stacks PN1010.P499

Short Story Criticism                                                                                                                   Location: Reference Stacks PN3373.S386

E-books

eBook Collection (EBSCO)                                                                                                                                                       Digital copies of books, reports and other resources covering all academic subject areas.

Selected Internet Resources

Complete Works of William Shakespeare

Cambridge History of English and American Literature