ENGL 247 American Ethnic Literature

What is Literary Criticism?

What is Literary Criticism?

LITERARY CRITICISM IS analysis, interpretation and evaluation of authors and their works of literature, which can include novels, short stories, essays, plays and poetry.  

Such critical analysis is often written by literary critics and is found in essays, articles and books.

Literary "criticism" is not necessarily negative; "criticism" means a thoughtful critique of an author's work or an author's style in order to better understand the meaning, symbolism or influences of a particular piece or a body of literature.

You read literary criticism to see what others have written on a text. When you write your own literary analysis, you enter into that critical conversation.

Use more than one resource; you will find different scholarly articles in each. If you do not find your author in one work, use another.

Literary Criticism Online

Find Scholarly Literary Criticism

You can access these databases while on campus or off-campus with your GRC student credentials 24 hours a day. You must access them from this class research guide or the library homepage. 

I recommend starting with:

Gale Literature

Offers literary criticism of many of the authors and works you will read in English 247. While GL

Gale Literature hosts both scholarship and popular text.

The best way to find scholarly literary criticism in Gale Literature is to:

  1. Search by keyword, author name or text title
  2. Limit to Literature Criticism
  3. ASSESS. Is it scholarly?

In Gale Literature, you can try limiting to Scholarly Peer Reviewed Publications, but that will omit some good sources. 

Holman Library One Search

 

This can be a helpful search phrase to copy and paste into One Search to find literature criticism: (criticism OR critique OR analysis OR interpretation)

Use the One Search link above to search across all library resources at once and get a sense of themes addressed and  resources available.

  • Select Advanced Search.
  • Add keywords one at a time.
  • Filter (aka refine or limit) the list of titles you get by Source type and more.
  • Select an article title to learn more. Open the link to the resource (this can take a little persistence!) and read the abstract.
  • To step in to the scholarly conversation, be sure to check Peer Reviewed Journals on the left.

The image below models: 

  • Start with a keyword or keyword phrase you want to learn about, such as "magical realism."
  • Connect and narrow it with another search term, such as women. 
  • To find scholarly analysis in articles, limit to Peer Reviewed Journals only. 
  • To find scholarly analysis in books, limit to books - and assess. Look for academic language, tone, and content. 

Click on Image to Enlarge

Academic Search Complete and ProQuest Combined Databases

Academic Search Complete and ProQuest Combined Databases are the library's most comprehensive online databases of scholarly articles. Each provides multidisciplinary collections of articles from newspapers, magazines and scholarly journals.

How to use Academic Search Complete and ProQuest:

To find scholarly literary criticism on your authors, texts and course themes, limit your search to scholarly (peer reviewed) Journals. That means those articles have been reviewed and edited by experts in that field field before publication. 

Use multiple relevant keywords or subject terms to find the most relevant articles. Ex:

  • "A Raisin in the Sun" (notice I put the phrase in quotes to keep the words together) gets 273 results. 
  • "A Raisin in the Sun" AND criticism returns 10 titles"
  • "A Raisin in the Sun" AND reviews returns 76 titles. (Note: reviews may not be scholarly"
  • "A Raisin in the Sun" AND segregation returns 2 articles that specifically address that theme.

JSTOR

JSTOR is an online archive of mostly scholarly articles. Use the advanced search feature as with Academic Search Complete to focus your results. Tip:

  • Under Narrow By, select ARTICLES. JSTOR returns lots of reviews and that's one way to try to exclude them.

 

 

Can't Find Full Text?

Can't Find Full Text?  Request books and articles for free through Interlibrary Loan:

Key Databases

Find Scholarly Articles in Other Library Databases

Find scholarly criticism in library periodical databases. Search directly in databases to find relevant subject terms and leads to additional resources.

To find scholarly articles, be sure to limit to scholarly peer reviewed journals. 

For an overview of scholarly sources try Holman Library One Search.

Holman Library Catalog

Find criticism 

  • Search by literary work, author name, or larger idea/genre to find books that contain criticism.
  • Try a subject search or try adding in as keyword: criticism and interpretation
  • Find the print text of the work and see if it opens with a critical introduction by a known literary critic.
  • Be sure to browse the books on the Finding Books tab of this guide for some suggested criticism.