LibGuides: EN 200: Home

Research

Research Strategies

For Background Information, Search:

Credo Reference - For historical and general background information
Oxford English Dictionary - Trace historical uses and meanings of words
Literary Encyclopedia - articles by scholars on writers' life and works
Scribner Writers - essays on authors and literary genres; can be searched for a particular word or phrase or by category, including gender, genre, language, time period, nationality, and ethnicity
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics - entries on all aspects of poetry: history, movements, genres, prosody, rhetorical devices, critical terms
Encyclopedia of Literature and Criticism - a searchable ebook for reference
Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism - a comprehensive historical survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements

Use terminology and facts learned from the background articles to search for scholarly articles and reviews in MLA Bibliography, JSTOR, and Academic Search Complete.

For Articles about these Writers, Search:

MLA International Bibliography (search Name as Subject; this is a good source for critical articles)
JSTOR
Project Muse
American Periodicals (1740-1940)
British Periodicals (17th - early 20th c.)

For Historical / Cultural aspects, search the database, Historical Abstracts Try searching: England AND 18th century AND gender

Books

Search the Catalog for books by or about your writer.
Then expand your search with subject linking.
Be sure to look at the Table of Contents and the Index.

For works by individual writers, search:

the CBBcat by Author, typing in family name first

For Books about individual writers, seach:

their names as Subjects in the catalog, e.g.:
subject: K eats, John
subject: Pope, Alexander - Criticism and Interpretation
subject: Shakespeare, William - Histories
subject: Sterne, Laurence - Correspondence
subject: Dickinson, Emily - Criticism and Interpretation
subject: Morrison, Toni - Interviews

You can also search for general subject headings or for topics from a specific period:

For Books in libraries across the country, Search WorldCat

How to sign up for an ILLiad account

For digitized texts of early Books printed in English:

EEBO

For 18th-century texts, explore

ECCO - Eighteenth Century Collections

Use the notes and bibliographies from every useful source you find to turn up more articles on your topic. For a quick video on how to look up and request articles you cited, click here.
Finally, think about what sorts of publication the information you still need might be published and stored in, and therefore where you would need to look for it.
- Biographical?
- Contemporary public reactions?
- Literary analysis?

More 1-minute videos on using library resources

If you have questions, don't hesitate to contact me:

Karen Gillum
kjgillum@colby.edu

Poets

Individual Guides for More Information:

Websites for Poetry

Requesting Books

For books at Bates, Bowdoin, or in Colby Storage:

In CBBcat, click on the CBB Request button in the record for the book you want. Then fill in your name and barcode number on the back of your Colby ID card.

To request books from WorldCat, Sign up for ILLiad

Citations and Annotated Bibliography

MLA style for citations

The purpose of citations

to show the research path followed
to provide leads for other researchers

You need to cite when...

you directly quote someone else
you refer to another person's ideas
you outline someone else's argument

EXAMPLE of MLA Style

on a Works Cited Page for an article retrieved from a database:

Stuart, Christopher. "William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow and the Autobiographical Impulse." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 47, no. 3, 2006, pp. 261-73. MLA International Bibliography. Accessed 17 January 2013.

Thus the pattern is:

Author. "Title of Article." Title of Journal, vol. #, no. #, year, page numbers. Name of database. [doi or url. Date of access (day month year).]

Web Resources

Victorian Literary Studies Archive Hyper-Concordance
Electronic verbal analysis of Tristram Shandy with Voyant Tools
Toni Morrison archive at Princeton