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How to Use This Guide

Welcome to the Introduction to Literary and Cultural Criticism Guide. Use the table of contents to find definitions, topic overviews, books, articles, and more that will help you with your research.

If you don't find what you are looking for or need help navigating this guide or any of the resources it contains, don't hesitate to contact the author of this guide or Ask a Librarian.

Literary & Cultural Criticism: Background & Context

Want to learn more about the background and context of literary scholarship? Below is a selection of resources that can help you to develop a better understanding of literary research, including the discourses of critical theory.

Always remember that research is not a linear process--it takes a lot of moving back and forth between sources and ideas to understand a topic and how it has developed over time.

A Dictionary of Critical Theory
This is the most wide-ranging and up-to-date dictionary of critical theory available, covering the whole range of critical theory, including the Frankfurt school, cultural materialism, gender studies, literary theory, hermeneutics, historical materialism, and sociopolitical critical theory. Entries clearly explain even the most complex of theoretical discourses, such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, and postmodernism.
Critical Terms for Literary Study
Each essay in this collection provides a concise history of a literary term, critically explores the issues and questions the term raises, and then puts theory into practice by showing the reading strategies the term permits.
Key Terms in Literary Theory
This book provides precise definitions of terms and concepts in literary theory, along with explanations of the major movements and figures in literary and cultural theory and an extensive bibliography.
Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics is a comprehensive reference work dealing with all aspects of its subject: history, types, movements, prosody, and critical terminology.
A History of Femnist Literary Criticism
This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field.
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism
The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism presents a comprehensive historical survey of the field's most important figures, schools, and movements. It includes alphabetically arranged entries and subentries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. In print in the library's reference collection (PN81.Z99 J64 1994)

Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
A complete text of the Oxford English dictionary with quarterly updates, including revisions not available in any other form.

Literary & Cultural Critics / Book Reviews & Bibliographies

The resources in this section provide information such as brief intellectual biographies of literary and cultural critics as well as annotations and reviews of the current scholarship on a topic.

I. Literary and Cultural Critics

Dictionary of Literary Biography Complete Online

This type of sources offer overviews and summaries; use them to gather, possibly, the following information:

1. A literary/cultural critics/theorist's contribution in the field of literature.
* his/her "new" approach/method/theory
* his/her "impact" on the scholarship of a particular type of literature

2. Seminal publications by and about a critic/theorist (as mentioned in the essays and listed in the bibliographies)
* note authors/scholars who are experts on the critic or the theory
* note major journals in the fields, where you are likely to find current scholarship on your topics.
* Are there scholars/journals from other fields as well?

3. People, events, ... related to an art historian
* how a critic/theorist is shaped by his/her education;
* who or what influenced their theory;
* what was the field of study like prior.

II. Recent Bibliographies & Reviews of Books

Literary and Critical Theory (an annotated bibliography)

The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

Dissertations and Theses (Check out the bibliographies of recent dissertations on a topic.)

Dissertation Reviews ( yet to be published, which "offer a glimpse of each discipline's immediate present")

H-Net Reviews in the Humanities and Social Sciences (1994 - )

New York Review of Books (1963 - )

1. You might consider such questions as:

Does the reviewer agree or disagree with the book’s theses and approaches?

Does the reviewer provide new evidence not included in the book?

What does the reviewer see as the relevance of the book?

What questions not included in the book does the reviewer identify?

Based on this book review, what do you think are a few of the major questions or methodologies being used in your chosen field?

2.
What's the next larger context?

When there Aren't any (or many) books published on your topic, try place your idea in the knowledge hierarchy. For examples:

connect Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling with 16th-century Italian art, focusing on patronage in Rome during the Renaissance and Baroque periods;

or, dealing with influential Italian artists through history, etc.?

English: Introduction to Literary and Cultural Criticism

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How to Use This Guide

Literary & Cultural Criticism: Background & Context

Literary & Cultural Critics / Book Reviews & Bibliographies

I. Literary and Cultural Critics

II. Recent Bibliographies & Reviews of Books