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Literary Criticism

Learn how to find critical scholarship related to a literary work, author, or literary movement using Pierce's print and electronic resources.

Searching for Books

All Pierce College Library books can be found through One Search. 

Use the search box to type in the title of a book, the author, or some keywords of the subject you are researching.

  • Title (example): the anthropology of religion, magic, and witchcraft
  • Author (example): Philip Stein
  • Subject or Keywords (example): "social media" bullying

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Find books, articles, and more.

Advanced Search

From Topic to Keywords

Once you have a topic in mind, you will want to translate your topic into keywords. Keywords are the key components, or parts, of your research topic

The great 3 minute video below walks you through how to translate a topic into a list of keywords you can use when looking for ebooks, articles, and other resources on your topic. 

Finding Ebooks on your Literary Criticism Topic

Ebooks are great places to find background on your author or literary work, and to find collections of literary criticism. 

The left side of this page includes a list of "Selected Ebooks" for your specific research topics. 

To find additional, relevant ebooks on your topics, search the ebook databases listed below. 

 

Introduction to Scholarly Articles

Scholarly, peer reviewed, journal articles are considered the best, most credible sources available. These articles flesh out what we learn from books with more in depth analysis of literary works, authors, or themes. 

Although a scholarly article about literature will not the look exactly the same as a scholarly article about biology, all scholarly articles share some common features.

The great 6 minute video below walks you through what scholarly articles look like so you'll be able to find, and identify, them in our databases. 

Finding Articles in Gale Literary Sources

Gale Literary Sources is a comprehensive database that is focused on your topic: literature. The great thing about this collection is that the articles you find in it are literary articles; they will not be articles from journals whose main focus is philosophy, sociology, or another field of study.

To learn how Gale Literary Sources works, check out the 4 minute video below. (This video also shows you how to find literature databases, like this one, from the Library's homepage.)

Finding Articles in JSTOR

JSTOR is a database of scholarly articles, books, and pamphlets on literature and other topics. 

The 8 minute video below will show you how to search JSTOR for articles from literature journals.

Finding Articles in Academic Search Complete

Academic Search Complete is a database that includes articles from scholarly journals and from popular periodicals (like magazines).

The 7 minute video below will show you how to search Academic Search Complete for scholarly articles on your topics.