Literary Criticism Research

ENGL 170

The Practice of Criticism

Library Session

Milne Library, SUNY Geneseo

Fall 2007

 
 
Literary scholars publish their work in journal articles and books. Frequently, literary books are actually collections of essays by different scholars. For many research papers written on a college level, your task is to read the work of these scholars, noticing how they write about literature and how they build on, and give credit to, other scholars as they construct their own argument. You must then try to incorporate the work of scholars into your research paper as you build your own argument, giving credit to other scholars that you consulted. You must be able to distingush real literary scholarship from the book reviews, summaries, and shallow interpretations which abound on the internet. PRACTICE with excerpts from articles and web pages.
Finding Articles from Literary Criticism Journals
MLA Bibliography
 MLA Bibliography is a research database lists literary articles and essays in books. The full text of the articles and essays can be located using the "Get Text" link or the link to GLOCAT, our online catalog. If we do not have access to the article you need online or in print, you can use the "Get Text" link to request it from another library via the IDS office.
Finding Scholarly Books on Literary Topics
WorldCat and GLOCAT

WorldCat is a database that has a combined list of all the books in all the academic libraries in the United States, including ours. So after you search for books by typing a topic into a search box, WorldCat will tell you if we own any here at Milne Library. Then you can click through to our catalog, GLOCAT, to see where we put the book in the library. If Geneseo does not own the book you need, you can use the "Get Text" link to request it from another library.

Database Searching Tips

Search broadly at first.

Know the difference between Keyword and Subject heading.

Use what you find to give you clues to finding other articles/books.

* If you cannot find a book or article exactly on your topic, try broadening your search. Looking for books/articles about the author.

* Remember to limit your search to "Subject" if you are getting too many articles or books searching by "Keyword."

* When you find one good article or book in a database, look at it carefully to get suggestions for other words to search.

Using the Web
Be extremely careful in using Google to fing web pages. Most of what you find will not be scholarly.

Remember: The point of research papers on literary topics is not only to tell your professor what you think about the story/poem/book you are studying but, equally as important, that you understand what the literary scholars have to say about it. To do that, you have to find out what the scholars say, and you can't do that using Google!

Sue Ann Brainard, Associate Librarian, Phone: (585) 245-5062 brainard@geneseo.edu
Milne Library, SUNY Geneseo, Geneseo, NY 14454, (585) 245-5594
The illustration is borrowed from the Oklahoma State Literature webpage.

Updated: 18-Sept-2007