Blume Library: Literary Research & Literature Criticism: Literary Criticism

Professor & Reference/Instruction Librarian

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Louis J. Blume Library, Room 201
St. Mary's University
One Camino Santa Maria
San Antonio, TX 78228-8608
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dduesterhoeft@stmarytx.edu

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Subjects: Art, Biology & Medicine, Communication Studies, Counseling, Earth & Environmental Science, Information Literacy, Languages, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science & Public Administration, Sociology, Theology, Women's Studies

What is Literary Criticism?

Literary criticism analyzes, interprets, or evaluates a work of literature. Criticism asks what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth.

This guide lists only a few of the reference tools that contain or refer to literary criticism. Ask a Reference Librarian for assistance in choosing or using literary criticism resources.

Discover: Find articles, books, and more...

English Literature & Language Databases

Literary Web Sites

American Literature Internet Resources
Includes selective links to online texts and to American literature sites by genre as well as to a list of pages devoted to specific writers. The LibGuide is maintained by Winnie Shyam at the Buley Library, Southern Connecticut State University.
Discovering Literature: Romantics and Victorians
Discover 1,200 Romantic and Victorian literary treasures from the British Library.
Romantic Circles
A peer-reviewed website covering the study of Romantic-period (approximately 1760-1850) literature and culture.
Victorian Women Writers Project
Includes lesser-known British women writers of the 19th century. The collection represents an array of genres - poetry, novels, children's books, political pamphlets, religious tracts, histories, and more.

Find Dissertations and Theses from Other Institutions

Start with these databases when searching for dissertations and theses written at other universities. You can request dissertations using Interlibrary Loan.

Open Dissertations This link opens in a new window
EBSCO Open Dissertations makes electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) more accessible to researchers worldwide. The free portal is designed to benefit universities and their students and make ETDs more discoverable.

Content Includes:
1,500,000 electronic theses and dissertations
320 worldwide universities that have loaded their dissertations to date
Dissertations and Theses This link opens in a new window
Locate open access dissertations and theses free of charge. Full text.
Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) This link opens in a new window
OATD.org aims to be the best possible resource for finding open-access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world. Metadata (information about the theses) comes from over 1000 colleges, universities, and research institutions. OATD currently indexes 2,960,883 theses and dissertations.
Dissertation Express This link opens in a new window
Dissertation Express is the fastest and least expensive way to obtain the dissertation(s) you would like to order. Dissertations ordered through Dissertation Express are available in PDF or bound copy formats. Dissertations are shipped by courier delivery to your home, school, or office. Select from over two million titles available from ProQuest. If you are looking for a known item to see if we have it available, you can try finding it on Dissertation Express. The site can be searched by keywords, author name, title, or publication number.

Discipline-Specific

MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
Produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), the bibliography directs researchers to more than 3 million citations from journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, scholarly websites, editions, and translations published from the late 19th century to the present.

MLA International Bibliography covers a broad range of humanities subjects, including world languages and literature, linguistics, dramatic arts, film, folklore, rhetoric and writing studies, the teaching of language, and the history of publishing. Its expansive scope also makes it an excellent resource for research in history, philosophy, communications, and cross-disciplinary subjects such as gender studies and area studies.

Content Includes:
3,100,000 records
25,000 indexed journals and book series
2,000 book publishers
Produced by the Modern Language Association of America.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
This ever-expanding collection of behavioral and social science research, dissertations, and scholarly literature abstracts offer a broad view of the field. With relevance to a host of related disciplines, including neuroscience, business, nursing, law, and education. APA PsycInfo delivers the peer-reviewed content and abstracts students and researchers need and does so with remarkable precision and a dedication to scholarly and scientific excellence.

Focused on the interdisciplinary aspects of worldwide behavioral and social science research and literature, APA PsycInfo is a resource for locating scholarly research findings in psychology and related fields across a host of academic disciplines.

Features include:
Coverage dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries, with extensive coverage from the 1800s to the present
Authored and edited books and book chapters
Dissertations selected from Dissertation Abstracts International (Sections A and B)
Publications from more than 50 countries
Journals published in 29 languages

Research Competency Guidelines for English Literature

Research Competency Guidelines for Literatures in English
Developed by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Literatures in English Section

Literary Research & Literature Criticism