ENGL 101 English Composition 1 (Moreno)

International Cities

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.

Some criticism, such as book reviews, is often written for the general public. Scholarly criticism is more in depth and sustained, and is written for an academic audience.

Find Sources for your Interpretive Essay

Reference Sources are a good place to start for author overviews, and historical and cultural context.

Gale Literature has a range of information on literature.

  • You can find background information to get started on research with author interviews, topic overviews, reviews and biographies.

  • You can also dig deeper with literary criticism and scholarly literary criticism. 

Follow these steps to search:

Step 1: Type in your author, literary work or topic (theme or theory, for ex) at keyword, work or person by or about. 

  • Important Note: In this database, you may need to type last name, first for good results. Be sure to double check.

(Click on image to enlarge)

Gale Literature Naylor, Gloria

Step 2: Limit your Results by Source Type. 

  • To get started, read Topic and Work Overviews, Interviews, News, and Biographies.
  • Limit to Literature Criticism to find (mostly) more in-depth analysis. 
  • To find strictly scholarly criticism from peer reviewed journals, limit to peer reviewed articles. 

Gloria Naylor search results in Gale Literature

Step 3: Click on an article title to find the full text.

Sample: 

Using the library's databases

Locate scholarly criticism and reviews of books, plays, short stories and poems through these Holman Library databases. Be sure to limit to Scholarly/academic articles when needed.

One Search

Or you can search for articles and more with the Holman Library One Search. 

What should you type in the search box?
  • Try author name AND/OR name of work.
    • Ex: "44 Scotland Street" AND "Alexander McCall Smith"
  • Try author AND place.
    • Ex: "Alexander McCall Smith" AND Scotland
  • Try larger themes.
    • Ex: City in fiction
    • Ex: "City as character"
    • Ex: Literature AND (exile OR diaspora)
    • Ex: Literature AND (space OR home OR place)
  • Try Subject terms:

A Note on Searching the Web

Assess

If you search the free Web for literary criticism and articles on Alexander McCall Smith, be sure to ask and answer:

  • Is this information at an appropriate level for college research? To determine this, you might check:
    • the length of the article
    • sophistication of language
    • who produced it
    • who the intended audience is
    • depth of analysis.
  • Is it written for the general public? If so, does it offer insight into the work or its reception?
  • Is it written for an academic audience?

Fictional Text