Step into the Scholarly Conversation on Literature

For sustained and deeper literary criticism, find relevant scholarly articles and books in library databases.

• Think of scholarship as a conversation - a conversation between critic, text, and other critics.
• Build your own conversation, integrating sources and voices that participate in your original analysis.
• Use the Works Cited in articles and books you like to track down the sources engaged by that critic.

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.

• 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.

• Literary criticism is written for an academic audience.

• Introductory articles, such as the Topic Overviews found in the database, Gale Literature, are written for students.

• Scholarly literary criticism is generally found in scholarly literary journals, such as Critique or The Journal of Ethnic Fiction, as well as in academic books. A scholarly journal is peer-reviewed if articles that are published in it go through a rigorous review process by other experts in the field.

• Book reviews are written for the general public, and they may be a good source of introductory analysis, as well. Local newspapers, such as the Seattle Times, and magazines, such as Entertainment Weekly or O, contain book reviews.

Characteristics of Scholarly Criticism

• Scholarly literary criticism offers an original interpretation of a literary text, and engages with that written work in a thoughtful, sophisticated and sustained manner. While literary criticism from a reference book provides you with introductory terminology, context, interpretation and more, scholarly criticism goes deeper.

• Scholarly literary criticism analyzes and builds on specific passages, characters, themes, language, etc. from a written work.

• Scholarly literary criticism brings the critic's particular theoretical framework, biases, questions, etc to bear upon the text.

• Articles are written by scholars in a subject area for an academic or professional audience. Check for author affiliations or credentials in the database record or at the beginning or end of an article.

• Scholarly literary criticism may be extensively cited, if the author references the work of other thinkers. Some scholarly literary criticism engages primarily and closely with the text itself, rather than with other the ideas of other scholars. (Scholarly articles in the sciences and social sciences are, as a rule, extensively and thoroughly cited.)

• There is no one correct scholarly reading of a text. That said, be sure to build your own analysis with examples and support from the written work you're analyzing as well as the scholarly article with which you are "conversing."