WLL 560: Principles of Scholarly Research: Critical & Literary Interpretation
Critical Interpretation
In library catalogs, add the phrase "criticism and interpretation" to searches on your author as subject or to the particular work.
Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke, 1892-1927 -- Criticism and interpretation..
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940 -- Criticism and interpretation.
Yoshimoto, Banana, 1964- -- Criticism and interpretation.
- Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and CriticismOffers full text articles on critics, and literary theorists as well as critical and theoretical schools and movements.
- Critical InsightsProvides access and searching capability to the Critical Insights book series comprised of classic and current literary criticism.
- Dictionary of Literary Biography OnlineA subset of the Literature Criticism Online database; the DLB includes monographic length overviews of criticism , historical setting, biographical details for individual authors, or a particular (very famous) work, or a literary period. Additionally other volumes in the series provide overviews for groups of authors by genre or historic setting.
Author Biography
Full length books about an author may be found in library catalogs. Use the author's name and dates as a subject heading search, e.g.
Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986
Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke, 1892-1927
Bulgakov, Mikhail, 1891-1940
Yoshimoto, Banana, 1964-
Reference sources will include shorter biographies, and will often provide recommended full length works.
- Literature Online - LIONIncludes reference works, biographical sketches, bibliographies, and secondary criticism of British and American literary works. Offers full text of some novels, poems, dramas, and prose.
- Literature Criticism OnlineConsists of summaries of works, Western literary criticism, and literary movements as well as biographical sketches of authors from the classical period to the present.
- Literature Resource CenterProvides reference, literary timelines, and articles on authors, journalists, and critics from all literary periods. Covers literary genres such as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, history, and journalism.
Critical Theory
A selected list of online resources examining the concepts and definitions regarding critical theory. (NOTE: click on "View Online" to access the resource.)
- A dictionary of critical theory (Ebook)"Covers all aspects of critical theory from globalization and race studies, to queer theory and feminism, as well as topics such as the Frankfurt school, cultural materialism, gender studies, literary theory, hermeneutics, historical materialism, and sociopolitical critical theory. Explains complex theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism. Features biographies of important figures in the field."
- Critial theory: a very short introduction (Ebook)The author provides sketches of leading representatives of the critical tradition (such as George Lukacs and Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and Jurgen Habermas) as well as many of its seminal texts and empirical investigations. This Very Short Introduction sheds light on the cluster of concepts and themes that set critical theory apart from its more traditional philosophical competitors.
- Critical theory: the key concepts (Ebook)"Critical Theory: The Key Concepts introduces over 300 widely-used terms, categories and ideas drawing upon well-established approaches like new historicism, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, and narratology as well as many new critical theories of the last twenty years such as Actor-Network Theory, Global Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Speculative Realism. This book explains the key concepts at the heart of a wide range of influential theorists from Agamben to to Slavoj Žižek."
- A dictionary of cultural and critical theory (Ebook)This dictionary provides an authoritative and accessible guide to modern ideas in the broad interdisciplinary fields of cultural and critical theory. Features a fully updated bibliography.
Publishing & Textual History
In addition to journal articles which may address some aspect of the publishing history of a work, search library catalogs with additional keywords to focus your results. Suggested keywords, phrases or subject searches to try:
- "critical editions"
- facisimile editions published by university presses
- Add the term "bibliography" to a subject search on your work to pull up authoratative comprehensive bibliographies on the work which you would expect to include works on textual history as well as cricitism.
- add the subject term "authorship" to your work or to your author as a subject; e.g. "Melville, Herman, 1819-1891 -- Authorship"
Subject Author Search: add the subject term
"criticism, textual" to your author as a subject; e.g.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 -- Criticism, Textual.
Editions
Critical Editions: Critical editions are published texts incorporating a detailed and scholarly analysis and commentary about a work. For searching, use the phrase
"critical editions"
to discover these materials in the library collection.
Facsimile Editions: Facisimile editions are an edition of a book, etc, that is an exact reproduction of an earlier edition and are generally publshed by university presses. As with critical editions, use the phrase "facsimile editions" in your search.