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KEY DATABASES

  • The MLA International Bibliography tracks scholarship on literature, language, linguistics, and folklore back to 1926. It is both international and multilingual, making it a great general tool for preliminary searching. (As the index is produced in the U.S., there is a natural bias toward anglophone literature and toward works by American scholars.)
  • Literature Online (for Anglophone literature) includes a large corpus of literary texts, author biographies, an excellent selection of specialized encyclopedias, and an index to scholarship.
  • The Johns Hopkins Guide to Theory and Criticism offers in-depth encyclopedia entries on literary theorists and critical movements.

SEARCH WORDS

Search terms that can help you improve your results in HOLLIS, Academic Search Premier, and other multidisciplinary resources:

  • Literature, “criticism and interpretation,” rhetoric
  • genre terms (novel, fiction, poetry, drama)
  • geographic terms (United States, American)
  • time period terms (19th, "to 1500")
  • Terms for region or language (Italian, Asian)

See Search Vocabulary for more details

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

Each page of this guide recommends my favorite tools and strategies:

Literature: A Guide for Graduate Students supplements this guide with:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Literary Research in Harvard Libraries was originally written by Sue Gilroy and Laura Farwell Blake, and remains deeply indebted to their work.

FURTHER GUIDANCE

Photo of Odile Harter (links to Odile's staff page)

Odile Harter

Research & Pedagogy Librarian

Email Odile

Hi! I'm Odile Harter, the library liaison to English and Comparative Literature. Email me with questions or to schedule a research appointment.