Meet Your Librarian
You Might Also Like...
How to Use This Guide
Welcome to the Tisch Library guide to resources for the graduate study of literature in English. 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 Research: 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.
- A Dictionary of Critical TheoryThis 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 StudyEach 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 TheoryThis 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 PoeticsThe 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 CriticismThis 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 CriticismThe 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)Contains the complete text of the OED's 20-volume Second Edition and 3-volume Additions Series plus Historical Thesaurus of the OED. Also includes draft material from the current OED project, representing the latest progress towards a completely revised and updated Third Edition. The OED online can be used to perform simple searches for word definitions, or for full-text searching of all OED's definitions, etymologies and quotations through the Search function.
Find Books and Articles in JumboSearch
Want to discover everything that Tisch Library has on your topic? Try searching for your topic in JumboSearch, which simultaneously searches across all of the library's resources, including: books from the library catalog: journal articles in databases, online and in print; research guides on your topic; digital files from the Archives; and much, much more!
Recommended Web Resources
There are a lot of great resources on the web where you can find information about English Literature as well as online primary texts (stories, poems, plays, and novels) and recordings of literature being read aloud. Have fun exploring!
- Center for the Humanities at TuftsThe Center for Humanities at Tufts fosters interdisciplinary humanities work in comparative literature, comparative religion, world history, philosophy, anthropology, and the arts, to innovate new research and reflection.
- Bulfinch's MythologyProvides the complete text of the standard guide to Western mythology.
- Early Modern Literary StudiesOnline journal devoted to English literature of the 16th and 17th Centuries.
- Encyclopedia MythicaAward-winning internet encyclopedia of mythology, folklore, and religion. Here you will find everything from A-gskw to Zveda Vechanyaya, with plenty in between.
- Harry Ransom Center Digital CollectionsThe Harry Ransom Center is an internationally renowned humanities research library and museum. Its extensive holdings provide a unique record of the creative process of writers and artists, deepening our understanding of literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts.
- Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages & RenaissanceIter is a not-for-profit partnership dedicated to the advancement of learning in the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Access medieval and Renaissance resources featuring the Iter Bibliography, Iter Italicum, bibliographies of Milton and English women writers, and its full-text journal collection.
- The Labyrinth: Resources for Medieval StudiesFrom Georgetown University, medieval studies links arranged by topic.
- Luminarium: Anthology of English LiteratureLife, works, essays, quotes and works for authors from Middle English, Renaissance and 17th-Century literature.
- PennSoundListen to poetry read aloud, author talks and more at this comprehensive site from the University of Pennsylvania.
- Poet's CornerThe collection covers roughly 7,000 works by about 800 poets, including some of the best known works in the English language, as well as many obscure and forgotten works that are well worth reading.
- Romanticism and Victorianism on the NetRomanticism and Victorianism on the Net (RaVoN) is an International Refereed Electronic Journal devoted to British Nineteenth-Century Literature.
- The Victorian WebInformation on a variety of topics in the Victorian period, including a timeline, information on genre and technique and author-related links.
- Voice of the ShuttleExtensive humanities database broken down into precise categories by period and theme.
- Westminster Detective LibraryIt is the mission of the Westminster Detective Library to catalog and make available online all the short fiction dealing with detectives and detection published in the United States before Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “A Scandal in Bohemia” (1891).