WHAT IS LITERARY CRITICISM?

Literary criticism is the evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of a book, story, essay, play, or poetry or of an author’s body of work.

LITERARY CRITICISM SITES

From the Library Homepage http://www.sac.edu/students/library/nealley/ choose Subject Guides then Literature for access to these sites.

• Free Book Notes
  http://www.freebooknotes.com/

• Grade Saver
  http://www.gradesaver.com/classicnotes/titles/

• *Internet Public Library
  http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/

• Novel Guide
  http://www.novelguide.com/

• Pink Monkey
  http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/notes1.asp

• *Spark Notes
  http://www.sparknotes.com/

• American Literature
  http://www.wwnorton.com/naal/

• Online American Literature Resources
  http://college.hmco.com/english/heath/toc.html

• English Literature
  http://www.wwnorton.com/nael/

• Rutgers Literary Resources on the Net
  http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Lit/

*=metasites

Searchable by literary period

• World Wide Web English & American Literature
  http://www.uky.edu/Subject/englit.html 

• Gothic Literature
  http://www.litgothic.com/index_fl.html

Author Biographies

• American Authors on the Web, 1550-1950
  http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/AmeLit.html

• *Internet Public Library
  http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/

• *Google Directory: Literature
  http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Authors/

• Literary History
  http://www.literaryhistory.com/index.htm

• Medieval and Renaissance Authors
  http://www.luminarium.org/illuminate.htm

• Postcolonial Contemporary Authors: Africa, S. Asia, Australia, UK
  http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/misc/authors.html

• Questia
  http://www.questia.com/Index.jsp

Full-text Books in Electronic Format

• American Literature to 1800
  http://bubl.ac.uk/link/a/americanliteratureto1900.htm

• Bibliomania
  http://www.bibliomania.com/

• Classics Archive
  http://classics.mit.edu/index.html

• Digital Textbooks
  http://www.digitaltextbooks.net/

• Electronic Texts
  http://www.infomotions.com/alex/

• Ereader
  http://www.ereader.com/

• Free Ebook Library
  http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/

• Google Ebooks
  http://books.google.com/

• Many Books.net
  http://www.manybooks.net/

• Online Books Page
  http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/authors.html

• Project Gutenberg
  http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/

• Complete Works of William Shakespeare
  http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/works.html

 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE NEALLEY LIBRARY: BOOKS

Online Catalog Search

Execute a Basic Search by choosing the Subject field and typing in the author’s last name, first initial.  You should find a sub-heading of criticism and interpretation that lists books which discuss the author’s work.

Whitman W	Subject Browse
retrieves	Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892
	Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892, criticism and interpretation

LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE NEALLEY LIBRARY: REFERENCE BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism	REF PN 771 C59
Critical Survey of Long Fiction	REF PN 3451 C75
Critical Survey of Short Fiction	REF PN 3321 C7
Critical Survey of Poetry	REF PN 1032 C85
Literature and its Times	REF PN 50 L574
Literature of Developing Nations	REF PN 3326 L58
New Moulton’s Library of Literary Criticism	REF PR 85 N39
Nonfiction Classics for Students	REF PN 44 N66
Poetry Criticism	REF PN 1032 P69
Short Story Criticism	REF 3328 S5 S6
Twentieth-century American literature	REF PS 221 T834

 

LITERARY CRITICISM IN THE NEALLEY LIBRARY: DATABASES

The following databases can be accessed in “Articles and More” or remotely through the “Connect from Home” link on the Nealley Library homepage at http://saclibrary.sac.edu/.  Choose Humanities.  All sites provide full-text biographical essays of authors and literary criticism.

Literature Resource Center

Twayne World, U.S. and English Authors

Scribner’s Writer’s Series